Chapter 380

Kraft felt he must be insane to have undertaken such a stunt as climbing at night.

On a trail where even locals frequently slip and fall, stumbling forward by torchlight, no one could say whether the shadows at the edge of the glow were the next foothold—or a bottomless cliff.

But the priest was right: on such a path, rain made ascent utterly impossible.

If he waited until the downpour began and the trail became completely impassable, letting an active anomaly source roam free for days or even half a month, triggering unpredictable changes—that would be true madness.

Though he didn't know why the blacksmith had insisted on bringing that thing up the mountain, he now had to find it, at least confirm it was temporarily harmless.

If conditions allowed, he might even bring it back and persuade Kraft to transfer him from the hospital chief post to a specialized field duty.

As for the risks, he had certainly considered them.

He seemed able to vaguely sense the presence of abnormal things, giving him a moment's warning if things turned bad; Benny was half-experienced and unlikely to get caught off guard; the priest was the only weak link, but anyone could swiftly subdue him.

If a real emergency arose requiring action, Yvonne had their back—handling minor troubles was no problem for her.

Besides, he had heard Dominic and Field's accounts: the threat was more internal than external; the real concern was the mental state of their companions, not any bizarre creatures.

Could it really be worse than Westmin? Thinking this, Kraft pressed himself against the rock face and shuffled forward.

The priest led the group, two body-lengths ahead, within arm's reach. Benny was in the middle; Yvonne brought up the rear.

Daylight was swallowed by clouds and mountains. As they climbed higher, village rooftops and autumn wheat fields vanished from view; the undulating tree line blurred, then the path they had come by was gradually erased, one stretch after another, by the encroaching dusk.

The leaf-strewn path felt soft and unreal, like walking on an unfastened ribbon, swaying erratically left and right in the mountain wind.

It was hard to tell if they were still ascending—or if they had already severed their connection to the ground, merely floating slowly through darkness, lifted by nothing.

The visual sensation of floating disrupted his judgment; Kraft stopped, breathing lightly, trying to convince himself not to be deceived by his eyes: the village slept peacefully below, the earth remained steady and unshaken, its existence unchanged by perception.

The effect was limited, but he did draw a sliver of solidity, regaining his balance.

They passed a winding narrow path, climbed a slope littered with jagged rocks, and pushed forward through tangled thorns and wild vines.

Wind howled through the gap between the two mountains, tugging at limbs and clothing, the deep chasm always lingering beside them. Occasional stones tumbled down; steps later, faint echoes reached their ears.

If they had once had the mental bandwidth to think of anything else, after halfway, all any of them could focus on was where to place their next footstep.

Even the priest, familiar with the route, walked with trembling steps; his heavy and coarse breathing was clearly audible.

Beyond a stretch of bare rock, the vague silhouettes ahead suddenly vanished.

"We're here?"

Someone asked hesitantly, receiving an affirmative reply from the priest.

Kraft straightened his bent back, his spine cracking. He looked up: pure, bottomless darkness, save for the faint flutter of bird wings.

Moving upward by instinct, the sense of presence grew stronger the closer they came—as if an invisible flame burned fiercely, its heat radiating even ten paces away.

On a flat-topped rock, he found it.

A white, coin-sized flake, semi-translucent like a mineral gem, its surface covered in scorch marks, as if pulled from extreme heat.

Its shape had been artificially shaped: overall leaf-like, both edges ground to a sharp edge, with small notches from repeated use, the rear fashioned into a stem-like base for insertion and fixation.

Far from resembling any imagined pagan artifact, it looked like an arrowhead made of mineralized bone.

Direct handling was impossible; Kraft pulled out the sample kit brought from the monastery, clamped the object with hemostatic forceps—it felt much lighter than expected, perhaps light enough to float in water.

One side bore a finely carved pattern: a totem or coat of arms, blurred by repeated scorching, barely discernible as a weapon piercing a creature resembling both snake and dragon.

Its body supple and elongated, bearing wings, limbs agile, carved as if a dying human, twisted in agony, grasping the blade that pierced through it.

In the flickering torchlight, the image gained an uncanny illusion of motion: the body slowly writhed, the raised, scaled textures opening and closing like living scales—deeply strange. Kraft quickly averted his gaze, shoved the object into a lead box, and fastened it with a leather strap.

"We leave now."

The wind grew stronger, saturated with moisture; his shout dissolved and thinned before it could be clearly heard.

The goal was achieved; he could not stay another moment. He raised his voice and repeated it. The four gathered close, wrapped their cloaks tightly, and prepared to depart quickly.

Perhaps sensing the storm's approach, the flapping of birds overhead grew quieter, yet unnervingly distinct.

He could even discern the creature descending from the open heights, landing among nearby thorn bushes; thick, spiny branches rustled apart and bent down, then fell silent—as if a stone had been swallowed by water, leaving no ripple.

"Are there any raptors or other wild beasts nearby?"

"Almost none," the priest shouted back. "Occasionally we see snakes—mostly nonvenomous."

"Good." Kraft scanned around, naturally finding nothing. The mountain wind swayed ground-hugging vegetation, producing rhythmic rustling of leaves and branches.

Perhaps it was psychological, but suddenly he had an inexplicable feeling—something was crawling along the ground.

The moment the thought arose, the sound seemed to confirm it, growing stranger: shifting from light to coarse, as if the wind had strengthened, scraping fine gravel.

Listening again, the sound was no longer scattered—it circled around them, acquiring spatial depth.

"Do you hear anything?"

Already on edge, Kraft dared not gamble whether he was imagining things—or if something was truly there. He halted, straining to listen.

The other three stopped, confused, seemingly unaware of any anomaly in the wind.

After listening a moment, Benny and Yvonne heard nothing; the priest hesitated, sensing the wind was unusual, yet insisted: "No beasts nearby. Perhaps night winds are just naturally stronger—we should hurry down."

Though he said so, his accelerated pace betrayed his unease.

After walking a dozen steps, Benny suddenly spoke from behind: "Hmm… maybe a little?"

"What did you hear?" Kraft asked.

"Not like an animal. Did we see any birds on the way up?"

"What birds?"

"Hard to say—maybe bats. Sometimes you see huge bats in the mountains, though no one's heard of them attacking people or livestock."

Even as he spoke, Benny clearly didn't convince himself; his hand had already drifted unconsciously toward his sword hilt. "Maybe it's just one especially large one."

He emphasized the last phrase.

Kraft was about to say they'd heard different things—but then the flapping returned, louder, closer.

As Benny described: like a bat of unimaginable size, its black membrane blending into the night sky, circling and twisting between the cliffs; the sudden gust was it skimming past the rock face.

The imagined thing rapidly sharpened into clarity—from sound to language, its form filled in.

Realizing his thoughts were becoming too active, Kup found his associations had already traced the outline of wings.

A burst of inexplicable turbulent air swept through, passing them, raising a large cloud of sand and dust before falling into the tree canopy ahead.

No withered leaves fell, no birds took flight; what followed was a scraping, slithering sound.

A pen tip scratching paper, a snake crawling on sand—subtle, yet leaving proof of its existence.

The scraping sound slid down the tree trunk, rubbing against the rough stone surface. Imagination shaped for it a long, flexible body, covered in fine scales.

The clearer it became, the heavier it felt. From some moment on, it gained texture; its belly, moving along the ground, bent thorny branches and pushed aside tangled bushes.

"Something's there," Benny whispered, drawing his sword.

Kup felt he should see it now; such a thing ought to reveal a terrifying outline from far away.

But there was nothing. The sense of danger warned in vain; his eyes could not capture a complete image, only a path one person wide, broken and intermittent, extending from the forest.

Vague, fragmented words poured forth ceaselessly, kneaded together in his mind like clay, trying to piece together some blurry, slender thing standing upright in his vision or imagination.

No clear boundaries, neither brighter nor darker than the surroundings.

Yet it was there; he knew it.

He could not describe how he knew. It was not hearing, not sight, possessing no sense of space or direction, lying somewhere between intuition and memory.

When he closed his eyes, the feeling remained. That thing had not entered his field of view, yet it perfectly filled the empty space in his cognition.

Like an extremely fitting word: you know where it should be used, what approximate meaning it can describe, but it has not yet been created, or was lost long ago in an untraceable history.

【It is coming】

Kup held the page-weight horizontally before him, then suddenly twisted sideways at the instant before contact.

Continuous sheets of hard material scraped past the metal hilt; his body lifted off the ground, weightless. Even with his elbows bent in advance to cushion the blow, the violent tremor made his arms feel numb for a brief moment.

He landed in the bushes, rolled to dissipate the force, and looked toward his companions for help. Yet Benny was also bending low to dodge what seemed an attack from the sky; Yvon, holding a hammer, gazed about in confusion, and seeing him fall, hurried over.

The priest clutched his holy symbol, praying aloud, trembling as he closed his eyes, having already surrendered everything to the Lord.

"Where?"

"It's..." Kup tried to point toward the direction of his intuition, but his hand drew a half-circle in mid-air. He realized he could not precisely describe the location, let alone correlate it with his vision.

Before he could think further, the rustling, chattering sound of scales approached, echoing.

It passed by Yvon, who sensed nothing; the wind it fanned did not even stir his hem. The latter looked at Kup with even more bewildered eyes as Kup struggled to roll sideways, attempting to swing the smithy hammer he had brought; it too passed unimpeded through the attacker's path.

They seemed separated at the level of cognition, occupying the same space yet attacked by the same entity from different angles. They could communicate, yet any mode of expression, including language, failed to make others understand the situation they faced.

That thing grew ever clearer in his consciousness, slowly unfurling a body with no visible head or tail; its scales rose in succession like rock layers cracking under pressure, layer upon layer, endless.

The mirror-smooth scale surfaces reflected everything around them: flames, trees, human figures, each scale different from the next.

At first he thought it was mere reflection, until he saw himself in one scale, from an impossible angle behind him; in the next, the view shifted to a downward gaze, as if peering down from the treetops.

The sense of dislocation intensified. The clearer it became in his cognition, the harder it was to describe. With every passing second, a new batch of descriptions for it filled his mind; language strained to refine its outline, yet grew ever more distant from the truth.

It was not illusory, but too direct to be expressed by indirect means.

A cry of extreme terror and pain rang out. The priest floated into the air, twisting in a posture so unnatural it seemed bones would snap, as if bound by a gradually tightening rope. Fine, sharp cutting lines sliced through his clothes, leaving spiral grid-like bloodstains on his skin.

Benny dodged the attack with considerable disarray, swinging his sword to try to help, but there was no resistance before the blade; the thing that was nearly killing the priest did not exist for him.

He forcibly deflected his slash sideways, grazing the priest's pained face, then struck the rock wall. The rebound force pried open his tightly clenched fingers, nearly making him drop his weapon.

Before he could adjust, he suddenly bent low to dodge, losing a lock of hair.

The squad's attacker was both here and there; soaring in the air yet slithering on the ground; possessing wings and scales, with no visible head or tail.

The knight suddenly understood something, letting out a roar that was unclear whether it was excitement or despair.

"Dragon!"

"What?"

Kup did not understand how he had made the connection, but Benny had neither the time nor the willingness to explain. Against his usual nature, he abandoned his passive defensive stance, raised his sword tip, and appeared ready to fight that thing to the death.

Perhaps he mistook the creature, so clearly defying reason, for a legendary evil beast, the culprit behind the storm, hoping to trade his life for the peace of his family's lands.

Yet Kup did not think so. The thing that had driven them to desperation was indeed terrifying, but far less so than the most formidable enemy he had ever faced. It seemed more like a vanguard envoy, an edge-derivative of disaster, rather than the main entity.

"Don't yet..." The sweeping wind pressure cut off his unspoken advice. His body, by reflex, dropped his shoulder and crouched sideways to avoid the direct hit. A vast area of sharp pain bloomed where he was struck, accompanied by warm liquid flowing out.

He stumbled a few steps, barely steadying himself, realizing he had greatly underestimated the danger.

Those things beyond reason were not beasts that could be defeated by brute force, but abnormal forms that overturned natural laws. Exploring new laws demands a price.

Now he might become that price.

But Kraft had never taught him to wait passively for death. On the brink of life and death, his mind, numbed by combat, sluggishly began to turn, reviewing what room for struggle remained.

His lower back struck a hard object: the lead box in his pack, containing precious samples.

A somewhat boring question suddenly arose:

【Why make it arrow-shaped?】

?? Double chapter (happy)??..???