Chapter 381: Collapse

Kraft rolled with the bundle, seized the moment to pull out the box, and used his body to shield the opening motion.

He was unsure whether this act held any meaning, or was merely a case of covering one's ears to steal a bell; perhaps the movements he thought were hidden had already been reflected without死角 in the scales.

As his fingers touched that arrowhead, the scaled creature seemed to sense something, actively breaking its previously unhurried attack rhythm and striking at an unexpected moment.

As a large creature combining features of flight and crawling, it possessed none of the weight befitting its size, nor the posture corresponding to its movement; its form was elusive.

Its flapping wings, unlike those of birds, offered no coordinated lift; instead, its sinuous body surged straight forward.

No acceleration needed, no logic to follow; it simply leapt from the blank spaces of thought, arriving along a predetermined path, as if the moment its existence was perceived, the assumption in the mind automatically became its route map.

It was not consciousness that predicted the attack, but consciousness that manufactured the permission path for it.

From the side and from behind, its outline shifted unpredictably, presenting disjointed postures in motion like a picture book reassembled after being scrambled, stitching together views of it from different angles onto a single trajectory.

The more one struggled to find a pattern, the more one was bewildered by its aberrant behavior, creating the illusion of fluctuating speed, while death arrived in an instant.

A thousand mirror-scales unfolded before his eyes; Kraft held his breath. He saw himself fleeing in panic, raising a hammer to block; he saw himself searching everywhere for clues; he saw himself accepting the stone tablet and reading the engraved fables.

It was the inversion of cognition; every thought, every speculation, widened the road for its descent.

The dragon never existed; the dragon was everywhere; it gazed at them within every eye seeking its existence, watching themselves.

An counter-intuitive concept crashed into his mind; he suddenly understood something, yet understood nothing. The incomprehensible information froze his thoughts, left his body stunned on the spot, and even made him forget how to control his limbs.

Just before colliding with the scales, Yvonne suddenly sensed something and shoved him away with a sharp thrust. His body felt as if its weight had been drained, sliding diagonally outward to dodge the oncoming assault. His internal organs were dragged by inertia, nearly torn from their positions.

A dull pain from within made his stomach want to vomit itself out; he had narrowly escaped disaster.

Yvonne grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up from the ground. Being unable to touch the opponent did not hinder her from judging the situation from the vivid performance of nothingness; the sudden halt of the evasive maneuver needed no explanation.

Fortunately, Kraft had shaken off his trance; his left hand clenched into a fist, pinching the arrowhead tip outward between his fingers to hold it firm.

"Is there a way?"

"Unsure."

The feel of the arrowhead was much as imagined: so light it seemed it might snap with slight force. The blade edge, perhaps considering material strength, had not been sharpened very keenly, yet it still inevitably bore many nicks.

This arrowhead had been reused many times, eventually flowing into the Church's hands, where it was cast into pure silver with extreme caution; whether the intent was preservation or sealing remained unknown.

Though mottled and old, its appearance inferior even to a novice's practice piece, holding it in hand, that distinct sense of presence was so strong it could not be ignored, as if some unshakable thing radiated from within, piercing skin and bone, blinding even without direct gaze.

But others seemed not to feel it so intensely; Yvonne only glanced at it curiously before immediately turning her attention to defending against the invisible thing.

If, in that thing's perception, this arrowhead was equally dazzling, then their assault was no surprise; the strange part was why it had not taken it away or destroyed it.

Disgust? Fear? Or some other reason?

He would know soon enough.

Scales scraped, air currents fanned; tiny mirror surfaces opened, closed, and wandered, crawling around the edges of senses and thought, using the folds of cognition as hiding places.

Like a snake, it extended a forked sensor, sniffing out every tiny activity of the target's consciousness.

Everyone who had witnessed cranial surgery must have been deeply impressed by that mass of tissue riddled with grooves and convolutions; Kraft was no exception. At this moment, that knowledge transformed into an extremely bizarre illusion, as if a smooth, slender thing had entered the folds of cognition, licking fresh thoughts deep within the cortex.

Amidst a terror sufficient to drive a normal person mad instantly, he gripped his weapon, surprised by his own miraculous endurance.

This steel creation had once shattered the shells of heretics; mold spots left by fungi still stained the leather grip; the cold steadiness of the metal seemed to transmit into his body through his skin.

His palm and fingers loosened slightly, sliding down by gravity to beneath the hammerhead; he reversed his wrist so the hammer handle pressed tight against his forearm, held horizontally before him to protect his chest and abdomen.

As with the start of every previous attack, that thing invaded his perception, appearing the next instant in the visual blind spot to his right.

Kraft stepped diagonally aside, missing the frontal impact; most of the force missed, the remainder striking the defensive line built by the hammer handle and ulna, still forcing him back half a step.

A low, thin scraping sound, disproportionate to its strength, continued unceasingly; the metal vibrated slightly, pale scratches weaving into a net.

Perhaps that which manifests through cognition is also bound by cognition; even so, this creature had not fully escaped the shackles of inertia, unable to turn in time during high-speed motion, shifting from offense to defense as it brushed past.

Aiming at what was likely the right wing, Kraft raised the arrowhead high and thrust.

He had prepared himself for injury. The insufficiently sharp tip might fail to penetrate; the reaction force could damage the hand, ill-suited for gripping the arrowhead, tearing the webbing between fingers or fracturing the metacarpals.

But the actual feedback differed completely from imagination.

It felt like a needle tip piercing a relatively tough tendon membrane; after slight resistance and a sensation of missing, the arrowhead sank completely into it, remaining lodged within that thing's body.

An indistinct hiss floated in the air; that thing's movement was slightly affected, seeming to lose balance for a moment.

Considering its movements were already difficult to judge, whether that moment of imbalance even existed remained debatable.

One thing was certain: the arrowhead was useful; he had wounded it. A spark of excitement and hope ignited in his heart, cooling faster than blood leaving the vessels.

It emitted the rustling symphony of scales again, flapping its wings; the arrowhead was embedded in the wing membrane, like an anomalous reverse scale.

One arrowhead was still too small; even for humans, the threat was limited. Even if it was easier to hurt, it could only be counted as a minor wound, causing little impact on its movement.

No, there was an impact; it seemed provoked, its movements becoming swifter, clearer in perception, and more aggressive. Scales fluttered, mirror reflections shattered, successively reflecting the faces of everyone around.

"Help me convey a message to the Master: the prediction was wrong; this thing has a physical form." Kraft realized he had done all he could.

An unexpected calm; fear rose from the depths, but not intensely. He even had the spare capacity to think of Wendeng Port, of that seawater, where the darkest, most poisonous reefs and the most cunning, ferocious creatures were never lacking beneath the surface.

The world was ultimately an ocean; any calm on the water's surface was merely a brief illusion.

"Relay everything that happened here exactly as it was; the Master will naturally make a judgment..."

He prepared to urge Yvonne to leave immediately, at least taking away valuable information. Yet before the words left his lips, his peripheral vision caught the latter's attention shifting away from him.

Their gazes converged on a single point.

The scaled, winged creature wove through the air like a shadow passing through a forest.

"Is this the thing you spoke of?"