Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

Visitors experience a sense of novelty while traveling through Westminster.

The foundation of the building complex is not a flat bottom, but occupies the entire top of the mountain and is built according to the shape of the mountain. Buildings of different levels and orientations are often not on the same level.

The top of the ramparts that surround the urn city can also be the road leading to the bastion. After walking around inside the bastion, I encountered an arch with a double-winged ring on the third-floor open-air platform, and walked into a small chapel. The pulpit cleverly blocked the back passage to the inner bastion tower.

Everything is closely connected but clearly separated into their respective spatial functional areas, turning the unlevelable terrain from a construction obstacle into an advantage.

Outsiders will get lost in such a transportation network, and the defenders will rely on the advantage of familiar roads to appear anywhere or seal off an area. Not to mention that all the design details are intentionally designed to make it convenient for the defender. For example, the spiral staircase running clockwise from bottom to top only facilitates the use of right-handed weapons in a limited space.

Following Martin as their guide, they walked through the shortest "shortcut" after the attacker broke through the outer wall - assuming someone could really do it - and almost walked around half a circle gradually, exposing the inner fortress halfway. Under the crossfire of the city wall and flanking towers, the other half is an indoor obstructive scene like the spiral staircase mentioned above.

If you don't want to fall into this desperate maze of one-sided street fighting, you have to honestly face the "inner door" that is not opened late at night, and repeat the siege process under the attack from both sides above your head.

The designer has well integrated these ideas into the architectural structure, which is a perfect example of the malicious intent of the defender. Kraft nodded repeatedly along the way, and with some reluctance arrived at his destination, the absolutely safe inner castle guest room, before the torch went out. Perhaps it was used as a shooting hole during the war, and the windows without any wooden parts were made vertical and narrow. At least the residents did not have to worry about anyone breaking through.

However, in such a pure stone world, some tenacious creatures can still grow. He found a few clusters of fungi no bigger than a little fingernail in the dirt on the windowsill.

The warm and humid climate here seems to be particularly suitable for the growth of these fast-growing little things. With just one rain, you can see them in the wild, indoors, on the dining table, and in all places you can imagine or imagine.

More than thirty feet above the ground, with a rugged cliff looking down from the window, Craft spent the night with a guard at the door. It was an unexpectedly peaceful night, and when he opened his eyes again, he was happy to see that it was the first light of dawn, illuminating a normal room and not some other weird and desolate place.

After breakfast was brought and no one bothered him again, he stayed in his room doing nothing until noon.

"Good afternoon, Professor Kraft, I hope you had a peaceful sleep last night." A familiar greeting came from outside the door, "If you want, you can choose the black robe you are most comfortable with."

"Oh? I thought it would be more formal." Even so, Kraft did not hesitate to change out of the party clothes that made him feel uncomfortable and put on a black suit.

"No. Today is a private meeting. There are no extra people involved, so you only need to wear regular clothes." Waiting outside the door, Martin felt as relaxed as if he were walking in his living room, but he became serious again when he mentioned his schedule. He made a sound like an empty can of wind chimes as he walked around. Craft opened the door and saw Martin wearing an unprecedented blue and white oak leaf pattern robe and armor, without a helmet, leading a group of guards and servants.

"Of course no one should know. This is what I must remind you." He picked up a ribbon from the tray in the servant's hand, wrapped it around Kraft's neck, and hung both ends on his chest, "Let Let's go."

At this point, the passage is no longer tortuous and difficult to understand. Along the standard octagon of the inner fort, rooms and transportation are distributed layer by layer. They are heading towards the core area of ​​the fortress along the main thoroughfare on one side.

Two people were waiting for them at the door. One was a man in aristocratic clothing with two delicate moustache, and the other, unexpectedly, was an acquaintance whom he had just met.

"Mr. Wilbert, this is Professor Kraft I want to introduce to you." Professor Fernand, or rather Viscount Fernand, was wearing the black robe from last night's banquet and seemed to be in bad spirits.

"It's a little late. Please forgive me for not being able to withstand such bumps from you young people. It's just a little preferential treatment for the elderly."

"Hello, I am Wilbert, the Duke's internal affairs officer. Please be quiet after entering. Your Excellency is not in good spirits." The mustache bowed to Kraft, which was not obvious, but was extremely strict and standard. As a model gift, I shook my head slightly at the return gift that was obviously not commonly used by the visitor, "Your hands should be slightly higher and placed closer to your shoulders, not in front of your heart."

It sounds more like a position in the army, but his performance is more consistent with the identity of a meticulous aristocratic butler with some obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Professor Fernand interrupted his rambling, "Okay, Wilbert, the Duke won't care about this. We are in a hurry and have to let him see that."

【that? 】

Kraft looked at Fernand without knowing why, and couldn't get an answer from the other person's face, but the house officer was successfully persuaded to put down his insistence on etiquette, and turned sideways to wave to the heavily armed guards on both sides of the thick double doors.

A warm current gushes out from the crack of the open door, and House Officer Wilbert reaches out to them to send a silent but clear invitation to step into the carpeted room. The zigzag edge embroidery of long blue leaves led them straight to the burning fireplace in the center, into which the servant was pouring dry spices and incense-like substances.

Under the wall hangings of crossed swords and oak-patterned shields, on a chair padded with thick fur, a figure sat facing the fire, with his back to the visitor.

"Your Excellency, the doctor is here." The house officer floated lightly on the carpet, came to the chair and reminded softly, then stepped aside and motioned to Professor Fernand and Kraft to follow him.

"Come in, Viscount Fernando. There is also Knight Kraft from the north."

Kraft followed Fernand in small steps to the owner of the castle. He watched the old professor salute and followed suit, remembering to move his hand up two rib heights.

This is the first time someone has called him that. In theory, he should have such a temporary title as the heir before inheriting his grandfather's title. The small border nobles generally didn't pay much attention to this theory, and Old Wood didn't bother to give him a knighthood, but it must be admitted that this name was standard.

"Ahem."

A series of coughs and tremors hit the throat and chest. The person in the chair arched his body and the bearskin on his chest slipped. The pause in the sentence just now was not due to forgetfulness and hesitation, but due to shortness of breath.

Wilbert quickly stepped forward and picked up the bear skin and put it on him again. Kraft also saw clearly this mysterious figure who might be the main reason for his invitation.

The donut-shaped crown is pressed on the neat gray hair, and the half-closed eyes reflect a tired but clear look under the light of the fire. His will is still clear, but his body can no longer support this state for too long. .

You can see the muscles with obvious signs of exercise under the wrinkled skin lines. They should have bulged to fill the skin in a stronger and fuller posture, but now they only have broad outlines. Like an old oak tree that has lost all its leaves, only its tall and strong branches recall the original image of the lush canopy and vast shade. Thinking about the past only makes people more regretful of the ruthlessness of nature.

"Please bring some chamomile and licorice sweet tea to your lord the Duke," Fernand ordered. There were several servants and guards standing against the wall in this spacious room.

"Professor Kraft, I believe you have already guessed that the case we revealed vaguely at the party is right in front of your eyes. Everything before was really helpless. As the core of the entire Westminster and even part of Dunling, the Duke His physical condition cannot be disclosed to the outside world, as this will have an irreversible impact on the situation."

It was something Kraft didn't understand, so he thought about it briefly.

"What's the meaning?"

"We cannot let people know that a royal military leader with no heirs and great prestige may encounter unexpected events at any time, at least not now." These words reveal something that a northern fringe person who never cares about the political situation of the kingdom cannot possibly know. The land he had lived in for nearly twenty years was not as peaceful as he thought.

But compared to these things that he was not good at, he was more worried about what "that" Fernand was talking about. It sounded like some kind of symptom with a time pattern, and he had to do a physical examination before that.

"I have to do some examinations. I need the patient to take off his shirt temporarily, can you?" Kraft put on the mask stuffed in the inner pocket of his black robe, rubbed his hands to warm up, and looked at Fernand and the Duke of Westminster at the same time. solicit opinions.

"There's nothing wrong with that." The Duke graciously agreed to this, but the second half of the sentence made Fernand's old face appear with unconcealable embarrassment, "Anyway, it can't be worse than giving an enema, right?"

After receiving the approval, Kraft rubbed his hands together and began to perform a physical examination.

In addition to extremely rigorous examinations, in an era when imaging is gradually developing, a complete set of standard physical examinations of the lungs is actually quite difficult to see. In these embarrassing days when there are no instruments and the mental senses can be used as much as possible, Lazy Dog has no choice but to pick up his craft.

Upon inspection, the respiratory movements on both sides were symmetrical and there was no obvious thoracic collapse, but a slight shift of the trachea to the right was found. When the voice is palpated and uttered, we can see the lesions in the lungs under the chest. They are different tremors in different places, which may be enhanced like solid conduction, or reduced and erratic, like cavity reverberation, showing the complexity and variety of them. lesions.

When the examination progresses to the next step, the changing tone of the percussion makes it clear to people in the room other than the examiner that the seriousness of the situation is felt. In every top-down percussion line on the chest, under the armpits, and under the shoulder blades, Kraft frightenedly tapped every intercostal space, and almost every two or three bars down could produce clear and turbid sounds. The different sounds seemed like the lungs had been molded by the disease into some morbidly complicated musical instrument, playing scales with the twisted scar strips and the hollow near the chest.

Based on the experience of souls from other worlds, this kind of tuberculosis has exceeded the deterioration level that he could see in the environment he was in at the time. If the patient himself was not strong and well-supplied with nutrients, he would have been defeated by the disease long ago. There is really not much he can do. .

As Kraft put his ear to his chest, trying to listen to the sounds in his lungs, he felt heat radiating from the patient's skin on his fingertips. It didn't seem to be a temperature difference caused by the fingers gradually losing heat during operation, but some kind of rapid change that increased the body temperature while blurring the remaining consciousness in the eyes, causing the pupils to drift in a daze.

"Attention, Professor Kraft." Fernand also noticed the change in the Duke, or this was what he had been waiting for and wanted Kraft to see. "The change in his condition that we haven't finished talking about has come."