Chapter 248: Reactive Activation

Kraft walked around the table, moved away the candlestick, inverted a ceramic mortar over the sample, and flipped the hourglass to time it.

After two cycles, he lifted the mortar, repeated his observation, and confirmed the crystal's melting trend—this trend was growing increasingly obvious over time, with its gradually rounding edges showing subtle signs of a solid-liquid intermediate state.

Though called melting, its transformation differed from ordinary matter; though it resembled crystallization when solidifying, it did not shrink slowly like ice, layer by layer turning to liquid, but softened like wax.

Through the convex lens, he saw magnified particles deforming as if breaking open their shells, shattering the deceptive hard geometric crystal exterior to hatch their true form.

This triggered in Kraft an instinctive association with spores activated by the environment, slowly completing their activation and transforming into something new—something materially similar yet entirely different in nature.

Kup took the lens, glanced at it, and briefly doubted his own eyes, feeling he had seen something hard to describe.

Like a fleeting glimpse down Dunling's night street—intuition recognized something before consciousness could, yet when he looked again, he could not recall it; instinctively, he stared harder, trying to recover the vanished thought.

But more observation only brought more confusion; on several tiny particles, he saw extraordinarily rich features: damp ice stalactites hanging from dilapidated eaves, thick candle wax from a church candelabra, swollen, seeping bulges in tidal flats, suspicious movements inside rotting fish, and countless other equally hard-to-describe analogies.

"It's melting..." he returned the lens, pressing his palms to his face to cool his eyeballs.

"Yes, it's still changing—why?"

The professor was still asking why, but from Kup's usual understanding, there was no real doubt in his tone—rather, it sounded like an inspector questioning a subordinate during rounds, the answer already brewed and waiting to be spoken; only this time, the questioner was himself.

There was no longer any need for two observers to cross-check; Kraft abandoned shielding the "just-right" contamination source and watched the melting process alone, holding the lens.

The attendant, likely temporarily classified as experimental equipment, was thus temporarily ignored, given no new orders.

Without the lens, the sample reappeared in his eyes as indistinct black dots, no details visible.

He was already accustomed to this, unconsciously cultivating the kind of orderliness peculiar to medical work.

Now, while Kraft was fully absorbed in something, his duty should have been maintaining the environment—but there was nothing here to maintain, so he sat motionless in his chair, enduring a dull silence.

Every second without a target became agony; he looked again at the glass dish, imagining what the lens revealed.

This hope seemed answered: four tiny black dots truly changed—they faintly expanded, grew rounder, like ice melting to water, or a silent bone drill carving smooth Kong Dong into glass.

Filled with mystery—a mystery that stirred the most primitive, purest curiosity.

If Kraft had to describe it, it was like a child holding a metal rod unable to resist the wall's electrical outlet.

Kup sat upright, leaning forward toward the table, trying to satisfy this curiosity.

And the source of curiosity responded again; as he drew closer, the black dots' pulsation became more tangible, their sharp contours unexpectedly clear in his vision.

It was the fullest black he had ever seen—perfect, almost unreal, impossible to resist the urge to lightly touch it.

The thought, once born, lingered in his mind, branching into more extensions: was it cold or warm? Slippery like grease or crisp like ice water? Could it even be elastic? Only contact would tell.

The fatigue from hauling equipment all afternoon and enduring the late night deepened; his core awareness drifted farther away, and those intrusive thoughts grew more active.

They leapt inside his mind like fireflies in fog, luring the sleepwalking wanderer to follow their guidance.

In drowsiness, Kup watched his own hand rise, a finger extending forward to point. Until his elbow left the table, he sensed nothing amiss—it was only a tiny touch, after all.

But his attendant career, brief yet unforgettable in his life, emitted a discordant note: one must never touch clean things without preparation.

Those murmurs retreated half a step, making way for the newly intruding process—he must wash his hands first. This halted his urge to reach further, making him sway as he tried to stand.

And this made Kraft notice his change.

"Kup, what's wrong?"

"Uh, I... I want to touch it?" He turned his palm over, staring at his extended finger, still remembering the logic behind this action, "I want to touch this thing?!"

"How?"

Kup couldn't believe it—he pinched his waist hard with that hand. After being explicitly warned of the danger, he had done this.

Most unacceptable of all, the origin of these thoughts was perfectly clear—from the birth of curiosity to the final action, every step traceable.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Kraft. I just seemed... off." He looked again at the glass dish; though unclear, he could see the crystals still retaining their general shape, slowly melting—not yet turned into a single black droplet.

"Focus, Kup. Treat this like a battle." Kraft rose from his seat, dragged the attendant—chair and all—to the wall, "Few get a second chance to pay for distraction."

"But this isn't your fault—even your performance was decent."

Even with prior warnings and training, recognizing something was wrong already met Kraft's minimum standard of competence.

"Still very sorry for interrupting you." Fear surged into his mind; his pounding heart hammered his skull with pain. To Kup, this still felt like an unacceptable human error.

"Actually, no. It's clear enough." Kraft walked to the table, turned his back, raised his left hand in a loose grip, as if straining to grasp something, or exerting force upon space itself.

"It's not just liquefying—it's activating. That's the manifestation of its nature. And the condition..."

A prickling danger, like the bristles of a wheat awn, lightly stabbed his brow, raising his hairs without leaving a trace—then relaxed and vanished well before reaching any boundary.

Kup struggled to his feet, stepped to the table, and peered down at the glass dish. The black spread and flowed like butter melting on a hot pan, thinning out, radiating an inexplicable allure demanding focused resistance.

"Good news—for you."

"What?" Every time he heard those words, it meant either work was coming, or big work was coming—he was already slightly allergic to "good news."

"Effective today, you're officially promoted to my assistant—trained, qualified, now operating experiments." Kraft stepped back from the table; the black flow quickly slowed, visibly lagging, tending toward solidification.

"Sounds difficult."

"As a professor's assistant and lab technician, you get lecturer pay—training period counts."

"I'll try my best."