Chapter 183

Kraft clenched his fist, completely enclosing the pendant, gripping the glow before more people noticed, "Alright, give the patient some quiet space to rest—too much noise hinders recovery."

"The Duke hopes you and Knight Martin will rest and then proceed to the meeting as soon as possible; someone will come to remind you, Professor." The guard finally withdrew from the room, pausing to add, "It concerns this matter."

"Of course, I want to know what happened too." Kraft nodded in agreement, gesturing for Kup to close and lock the door.

Hearing footsteps fade away, he pulled the curtain halfway shut, opened his palm, and the pendant—crafted from the condensed substance of a deep-layer giant fungus—emitted a faint crimson glow. Compared to the faint starlike red sparks visible only in darkness, it now resembled a solid flame of blood embedded in a metal plate, second only to its state when directly facing the "Angel."

This triggered Kup's instinctive reaction; he instinctively ducked beside the door and reached for his hammer's hilt.

Kraft rose, holding the pendant as he circled the room; the red light dimmed and flared again, showing undeniable changes in brightness when near the bed.

Yin Feng also noticed the familiar little ornament, watching as Kraft carried it around the room, finally bringing it back to her face, and looked up at him, puzzled.

The two stared at each other.

"Yin Feng, I know actively recalling that experience might be uncomfortable…" After careful phrasing, he chose a more balanced approach, to avoid making the girl feel interrogated.

"You may have been affected by something harmful—its effects aren't obvious yet, but they could later cause certain… ailments. So I need to understand exactly what happened that day, alright?"

He pulled over a chair, sat in the sunlight, clasped his hands in a casual conversational posture, "Just us talking—start from the morning. Was breakfast good that day?" As he steered the conversation toward an easier beginning, Kraft observed Yin Feng's reaction.

Bringing up a traumatic event shortly after it occurred isn't advisable; if Yin Feng's mental state wasn't suitable to continue, he would pause the conversation and first gather an overview from the Duke.

Yet the reality was that Yin Feng appeared calmer than even his best-case expectation—this calmness wasn't reassuring. After such contact, a normal person would undoubtedly suffer severe, lasting negative effects; her condition resembled a pain reflex that failed to trigger.

"Two slices of bread?" she replied, then continued recalling, "Then I finished my lessons for the day until noon, when a man named Brimmer came."

"Brimmer?"

A professor of fluidics at Rivers University, a disciple of Professor Feiernan—his name appearing on the visitor list was perfectly reasonable.

"What did he want?"

"He wanted your manuscript, saying it was related to… an academic gathering?" After a brief pause to recall the unfamiliar term, Yin Feng said with quiet pride, "I didn't let him touch your things."

"Oh, the manuscript isn't that important—but you did right." Kraft wouldn't admit he planned to write the academic gathering's speech at the last minute—his schedule was already packed with selective editing of his monographs.

This wasn't the sort of thing a mature professional would do. Even if nominally tied to arranging an academic meeting, requesting unpublished manuscripts was deeply impolite. Worse still, not even approaching the author directly—any misstep could easily spark serious conflict.

What followed shifted his impression of Brimmer from "rude, immature" to "suspicious."

"He stayed, and said he hoped I'd change my mind."

Brimmer's actions were clearly intentional—not accidental. Based on his knowledge of Rivers University, its members were people of status, well-mannered, and measured; such behavior didn't seem to come from the university or even from higher-ups like Professor Feiernan.

"Then what?"

"I spent the afternoon with the craftsman—they seemed to have made some progress on what you requested." She described her day—from Brimmer's visit to the empty afternoon—calmly, without ripple.

As if foreshadowing the climax, her description carried a faint emotional undercurrent—not fear, but something indescribable, like stepping out of a cave and standing before something grander than towering peaks, a pure emotion lingering long after, not merely awe, trembling, or wonder, yet encompassing them all.

She licked her lips, as if moistening them, or savoring something, "On the way back, near his residence, I saw something."

"His residence? What kind of thing?"

"They… were beautiful, like mushrooms grown on skin, climbing up from the cliff below." The images, rendered in words, conjured a horrifying scene: "I saw torches go out, hid somewhere until dawn."

A fully grown parasitic shell had awakened in the castle's patrol route, where vigilance was lowest, ascending the impossible precipice to the mountain slope—those who encountered it had no escape; meeting one on the mountain path was nearly synonymous with death.

But why had they awakened?

The only known site in Westmin Castle suspected of fungal spirit presence was on the Duke himself—he lacked the power to control a large group of shells.

Unless there was a "channel," a passage connecting to the deep layer, right nearby, allowing batches of fungal spirits to detect nearby controllable targets and temporarily enter the mortal realm.

A long-standing question found its answer—the lecturer and servants who vanished during the banquet. After understanding Edward's "disappearance technique," the answer had already surfaced: the heretics possessed a method to stably pull individuals connected to the deep layer into their realm.

The prerequisite was that the "caster" must be nearby—and the banquet's deepest chamber lay within Rivers University's premises; the one who performed the vanishing act must have been present.

And in these two incidents, the overlapping attendees were extremely few.

【Brimmer】

He hadn't expected this fellow to jump out himself. Looking back, his loss of control had clear precursors—his hasty exit after the incident, unbecoming of his status, though the connection hadn't occurred to him then.

"Did you see Brimmer again?"

"I heard a corpse was found in that room—can't tell if it's him." Yin Feng lowered her eyelids, her gaze unfocused.

"Don't be afraid—they're just things that can't stand against swords and armor." Kraft realized he might have asked too much; he wanted to comfort her but didn't know how to phrase it properly, "Think of them as wild beasts—like wolves."

Yes, they moved in packs, hunting in the mushroom forests, targeting their prey's bodies.

He hoped this wouldn't leave irreversible psychological trauma on the girl—Yin Feng was the type who struggled to express herself, accustomed to solitude, digesting alone what even adults found hard to swallow, never once seen crying, the most basic emotional outlet for children.

In his eyes, Yin Feng was an angel of education, possessing every quality a teacher wished for: studious, eager. She was also the kind of child a guardian longed for—obedient, sensible. But this sensibility wasn't built on understanding the world's logic—it was a behavioral pattern formed through observation, designed to avoid harm at all costs.

Therefore, don't blindly trust her surface calm—ongoing attention remains essential.

Besides, he genuinely sensed something off. Though Yin Feng's logic was clear and consistent with her role, her overall demeanor—judged by intuition—was itself the problem.

"Sigh." Kraft sighed, reattaching his spiritual organ—knowing each use pulled him closer to the deep layer, yet sometimes there was no alternative.

The internal structure of things flooded into his mind; his consciousness absorbed the vast information, sighing with satisfaction. The geometric crystalline growths embedded in his arm vibrated ceaselessly; fine concretions exuded beneath his skin trembled slightly.

Scanning Yin Feng's body, as expected, slight inflammation seeped from her bronchi—limited to the major bronchi, not yet reaching the alveoli, likely from inhalation.

A faint, ghostly, nearly humanoid form overlapped her body, detected by his spiritual sense. Its manifestation came from slight "fading," its difference from surrounding matter rendering it slightly darker, as if illuminated by a dim, colorless light.

That was something that should not be seen under normal conditions—Yin Feng's spiritual body. Kraft clearly remembered his last observation of a spiritual body: when Kup was affected by the deep layer, its "fading" made it visibly distinct from the environment, gradually matching the color of the deep layer as the influence intensified.

Something "familiar" clung to the spiritual body—clearly the source of the change.

It was a similarly ethereal, velvet-like cluster, its filaments interwoven with the misty, cloud-like spiritual body, like fungal moss rooted in fog. Their textures were nearly identical; at the point of contact, they were indistinguishable.

【Fungal Spirit?】

Within half a day, Kraft again felt a stabbing pain in the left side of his sternum, two fingers' width inward, radiating to the diaphragm, chest wall, shoulders, back, and even his molars, accompanied by noticeable pulsations in the carotid artery and pterion, as if the pressure building behind his eyes was forcing them outward.

The moment he saw it, his spiritual sense contacted it—an invisible force clamped onto the intangible entity, attempting to detach the foreign object clinging to the spiritual body.

That penetrating force surrounded him from all sides, tearing and pulling. The stimulated fungal spirit contracted reflexively, trying to escape the spiritual sense's grip—unsuccessfully.

But this method couldn't clearly distinguish the two—it was like an invasive cancerous tissue. The fungal spirit and the spiritual body shared similar natures and blurred boundaries, interwoven; pulling at one also affected the host, causing large portions of the spiritual body to be disrupted, on the verge of collapse.

Upon observing Yin Feng's mental state rapidly deteriorate, with corresponding phantom pain and drowsiness, Kraft was forced to abandon the procedure.