Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

A deep, long, lightless place.

He walked in the endless tunnel, the rock walls were dry, cold and rough, and the darkness was thick and solid.

There is no lamp or torch in his empty hands, and his eyes cannot see anything, but it seems that he does not need visual guidance and just moves forward instinctively.

There was an icy air blowing past my ears, coming from infinite depths, with a force that even clothes could not shake, but it caused the stone walls to tremble slightly, and the rock formations trembled like drifting leaves with the arrival of the cold current.

Something is approaching, the cold current is its deep and long breath, and the vibration is its pace.

The rocky scales, the long link-shaped body, and the willful ridges travel through the darkness, and the power that makes the rock formations tremble is quickly approaching.

The structure between the valve and the pincers opened up, adhering to countless blurry faces, faces of hill dwellers, sailors, acid burns, warts and blister-like mosaics clustered in the gaps between the rock shell segments, Micro-arthropods manipulate a flat, pale smile.

The tremors threw up gravel, the cold air surged, fear gripped the heart and squeezed the blood, the sharp rise in blood pressure caused a dull pain behind the orbit, and the sufficient supply of oxygen awakened the brain from the haze and realized the current situation.

There was no time to think about where he was and why he was here. With nowhere to hide, his subconscious made conditioned reflex actions based on existing experience.

…

"Bang!"

The desk and chair were moved, the uncapped ink bottle was swept away, and the slightly viscous black liquid was poured on the table, seeping into the messed up manuscript and spreading across the paper.

The deep black spreads out and crawls along the chaotically pressed fibers, quickly eating into the quasi-Gothic title, swallowing the introduction, and moving towards the straight-faced text.

The brain that had just woken up interrupted the previous process between scenes, reloaded the content related to the situation at hand, and watched the ink contaminate a corner of the desktop before reacting.

"Oops." Kraft hurriedly evacuated the remaining paper. In the rush, some of the incompletely dried writing was printed on the completely dry manuscript paper, mixed with the loose pages with some ink on the corners.

The table full of manuscript paper became a mess. Fortunately, the candlestick had already been extinguished and did not fall down and ignite the paper.

After taking two steps around the table, some old wooden boards groaned slightly underfoot, accompanied by an obvious hollow sound, suggesting that the bottom was a cabin rather than a solid rock formation.

On the wall hangs a long wooden tube for storing bundles of charts. This is the captain's cabin of the Iceberg.

They marched at top speed through the hills for two weeks, returning to the ship with firm orders to set sail. From dusk to dusk, the sailors were summoned back to the ship from the tavern or their beds with double pay. No one asked why the captain was unwilling to stay one more night on land.

Few people discussed those who had not returned during the hasty departure and busy river voyage. Only the first mate habitually greeted the young man named Walker and offered drinks to the captain who had not put down the steering wheel all night.

Then he felt the incomprehensible gaze under the tricorn hat, as if accusing him of triggering taboo words at sea that would bring bad luck, such as "drowning" and "capsize".

A small box was taken out from the secret compartment and placed on the deck. The coins were only barely covered with a shallow layer on the bottom of the box, but the golden metallic luster made Craft pay attention.

Rationally speaking, when many sailors consciously save money, it is not that they cannot collect seven kingdoms of silver coins that can be exchanged for one gold coin, but their consumption habits prevent them from saving this money, and their insecurity does not allow them to condense all their wealth. On a small thing that can be lost at any time.

For most of these people who have never touched gold, the impact of this box is greater than anything else.

After William promised that half of the box would belong to the people on the ship, and the other half would be handed over to the family of the deceased with their own eyes, the remaining objections that did not dare to be discussed on the deck disappeared. From the moment the gold coins fell into the bag, the names of the three faces that reminded William would not ring out from the most hidden wood cracks on the ship.

Instead, there were rumors that the captain had actually found some kind of treasure, and this kind of rumor that would spread immediately after landing was exactly what William needed.

After boarding the ship, Kraft borrowed the only fixed large square table on the ship to quickly record the principles of acid production and experimental descriptions. The other is in the hands of the cook, where he holds the stock pot and handles the occasional fresh meat. Recently, a new item has been added: appreciating the newly obtained gold coins.

"Is this a dream again?"

For half a month, that weird forgetfulness didn't happen again, or it happened somewhere no one noticed. It seemed that the only meaning of its appearance was to make the wound fade away in my mind.

However, nightmares from time to time became new worries, most of which were related to the experience of that night. Either he couldn't find the torch in the mine, or he was fighting against the arthropods protruding from the darkness, or being chased by something.

The side effects of a good memory became apparent at this point. He was unable to quickly forget his dreams after waking up, would react with a frightened aftertaste, and would have a difficult night.

This can easily develop into "William is still awake".

After several secondary awakenings, the captain would rather give up the comfortable bed in the captain's cabin, temporarily give up the entire place to Kraft, and go squeeze in with the first mate.

So Kraft was alone here at night.

The bright, white moonlight spilled onto the table from the lattice wooden window through the semi-transparent curtains, and it didn't look dim even without candlelight. He looked through the manuscript in his hand and didn't make much impression, but he clearly realized that the results of half a night had become a pile of waste paper.

It was so bad that Kraft stopped lighting the candle and walked to the bedside, preparing to take a nap and resume work tomorrow morning.

You still have to discuss with William how to use the information in your hand. Should he build his own production workshop or sell it to others to make a lot of quick money.

The former obviously has greater long-term monopoly interests, but in fact they do not have a ready-made industrial base and reliable manpower in this area, and they do not dare to continue mining from the remote mine in the southern hills. This raises issues ranging from scale to confidentiality.

Perhaps locating the workshop on the Wood family's territory can solve the problem to a certain extent, but the value of this technology is too great and the confidentiality is too poor. If the alchemist hadn't died so quickly, the place of production was hidden, and the surviving insider had suffered a stroke, it would have been a matter of time before the craftsmanship was discovered. This time may not necessarily allow them to make enough money from scratch.

Another problem was that William began to refuse to go ashore. At the strong request of the crew, he reluctantly docked to replenish the things that had not been replenished during a hasty sailing, and refused to disembark. It is impossible to manage onshore industries in this state.

The latter doesn't have this problem. You can sell it directly and make a lot of money. At worst, you can find an acquaintance or even a church to act as an intermediary and notary, and you can get it for 30% or 70%. Taking 70% is an unexpected surprise, and taking 30% is also a big profit.

Don't talk about the unique glass wing ring, just ask the bishop if he wants gold coins or the broken wings, right? The stuff belongs to the church, the money does not.

It happened that Kraft wanted a large sum of money for equipment, experiments, publishing books, and even taking in patients. If time is limited, money can be the catalyst for everything. William also showed a tendency to switch to a larger ship that could stay offshore for long periods of time.

Thinking of this, Kraft got up and left the bed, picked up the penholder, leaned over the ink bottle, and wet the tip of the pen with the bottom of the bottle that was not empty. He placed half of the torn piece of waste paper on the table, intending to use the moonlight to list the pros and cons of both, and take it directly to William tomorrow.

He sat down at the table, only to find that the tabletop had fallen into darkness again, the light strip was illuminating the bedside, and the candlestick stood in the shadow of the window frame.

【Moonlight, moving】

There was a tapping sound outside the window, as if some polite sailor had come in during the night watch and heard the noise and came to inquire.

Wet, soft things were covered with wooden boards, adsorbed in the sound of waves outside the ship where no one could stand, and the light was bright. Kraft stood up in shock and drew his sword, and sticky malicious memories jumped from his tailbone to the back of his head.

…

The empty hand lifted up the sheets, and the body suddenly jumped up. The room was dimly lit. There is a strip of hard object behind the pillow, which is the long sword that he put down before going to bed.

The windows were open, and the evening breeze with the smell of water vapor and sandy earth blew into the cabin. The turbid yellow water flowed under the not-so-bright crescent moon, and the hills on the shore were silent. It was a lackluster night scene of the Tobid River. They were sailing here normally. The only water transport line in the southern hills.

"Still a dream?"