Chapter 51: Feeding the Fish

Consciousness extended outward from itself as the center, revealing the three-dimensional spatial structure in an unprecedentedly intuitive form; it became distinctly blurry at a distance of four or five paces, barely reaching the inn's main entrance ten paces away, and beyond that, perception was utterly impossible.

Setting aside his situation, this new sensory organ made Kraft quite happy—literally happy; in this open perspective, he could observe the internal structure of his own body, witnessing how his heart pumped blood into the arteries. Nothing in this world was more novel than this experience.

Even though the reconstruction in his mind was still in its final stages, it could not stop Kraft from a burst of unexpected joy. For a moment, he forgot the otherworld, forgot the pursuit, forgot what else he could forget; this sense occupied his fragmented and incomplete mind.

Kraft wanted to announce to everyone he knew that from today on, he was CT, he was MRI, he could even be B-ultrasound; he was the entire imaging department!

Perhaps because the logical reconstruction was not yet perfect, the nonsensical joy lasted for quite a while. He joyfully used this sense to observe everything that interested him, including himself: wooden boards, stone bricks, the chest cavity, the abdominal cavity, even his own brain; he found no blind spots.

Just as he intended to carefully "scan" the internal structure of his sword, a sudden headache interrupted him, forcing his attention to shift away from the mental perspective.

It seemed the carrying capacity of consciousness had reached a critical point and could no longer accept more of this kind of information. It appeared that non-innate sensory organs did not adapt very well to humans; he could not use it for long, as the hardware conditions could not keep up.

Much like closing his eyes, Kraft could temporarily marginalize the mental sense and return to being a normal human.

In just a few minutes, the impact brought by the mental sense had grown to a degree that could not be ignored, resembling withdrawal symptoms.

The very first second after leaving it, Kraft experienced obvious discomfort, feeling the source of information suddenly shrink, as if wearing a full-body armor helmet, with a narrow field of vision, confined within an uncomfortable small angle.

He felt he was crawling inside a pipe, needing to take deep breaths to counter the illusion of breathing difficulty; the narrow, oppressive sensation Urged him to bear weight to use the mental sense again, to return to the free panoramic view, and to stop enduring the inefficient method of retinal imaging.

【Dependency, Addiction】

He had thought only drugs could produce such exaggerated effects; pure mental dependency could actually reach this degree. The claustrophobic illusion's impact on the mind fed back to the body, triggering panting and nausea, accompanied by slight muscle soreness, or perhaps a residue of intense activity.

The reconstruction in his mind was basically complete; reason desperately restrained the desire to reconnect with the mental sense. The more uncomfortable it was, the less he should contact it; otherwise, the next time he disconnected, it would surely be worse.

Restraint; he needed restraint, to gradually adapt to this switching process. Whether mind or body, he could not allow himself to be controlled by anything suspected of being addictive, especially since it could harm him in just a few minutes.

Kraft sheathed his sword, leaned against a relatively clean table board, lay down on it, and sought other things to fill his brain, trying to shift his attention away from the discomfort.

The food eaten for dinner, the book not yet finished, the clothes forgotten to be washed; some trivial and unrelated matters pushed out the unwanted things.

It was not particularly effective. Consciousness and body tossed and turned in discomfort for half an hour, or perhaps longer, before readapting to visual information as the primary source. Kraft felt his body and subconscious had already sought new love, abandoning the familiar sense used for over ten years, and attempting to make the mental sense a permanent replacement.

This feeling made the subjective consciousness very displeased, realizing there were parts within this body that could not be fully controlled; some tendency of "non-self" was growing, forcing compliance through physiological discomfort.

This was certainly impossible; he successfully suppressed the obstruction of the discomfort, rolled over, stepped into the water, and waded toward the stairs. All his clothes were thoroughly soaked in the seawater; the sticky feeling was very unpleasant, and the excessively low environmental temperature was constantly drawing away his body heat.

Returning to the second floor would make the situation better; if he could light the small stove in the room, he would still have a chance to dry his clothes.

Before that, Kraft found a middle position on the stairs to sit, poured the water out of his boots, and put them on again. This level of the second floor was still in an unknown state; climbing the stairs wearing heavy boots that sloshed with water meant not only the boots had taken in water, but surely his brain had too.

As a precaution, the sword was drawn again. That glowing thing looked quite terrifying, but it was not an invincible demon or monster running out of a horror story; it was more like an animal that used special methods to reduce a prey's ability to resist before hunting.

Regarding its tactics, Kraft had more or less figured it out. First, it approached when consciousness was already unclear; the light was gentle, the movements soft, and the voice as soft as a whisper; after exposure, it decisively adopted methods of intimidation and interference, using twisted screams that reached directly into the skull to destroy the target's will, while its eerie form itself caused mental devastation.

It possessed the eerie ability to drag prey toward the deeper layers; the closer the connection to the deeper layers, the easier it was to be pulled toward them.

Kraft could not understand what principle this was, but it was not difficult to connect this to the behavior of residents around the polluted wells in the Salt Tide Zone.

At that time, he only thought of the existence of a positive feedback loop between range, intensity, and number of people; now it seemed likely that this positive feedback involved its participation.

Large-scale contact, in the process of constantly expanding the deep influence "domain," attracted an eerie predator that used its ability to pull people toward the deeper layers; the sufferers' sleep became longer and longer. The day they completely fell into deep slumber was likely the day they completely fell into the first layer, a nightmare in the truest sense.

Speaking of which, it might be a bit strange; Kraft thought of a somewhat inappropriate metaphor: they were like small bread pieces with the oil skin torn off the surface of the water, gradually being soaked by the water. The fish impatiently churning the waves underwater were accelerating this process, waiting for them to sink completely into the water for a hearty feast.

Feeding the fish was, of course, for the fish; some people simply wanted to watch, while the more wicked ones would directly scoop the fish up. The instigator's goal had a seventy or eighty percent chance of being related to it.

He had figured out another question that was of no benefit to the current situation.

Kraft shook his head, shaking off the pale, nauseating memories that surged up. The phantom of tentacles flashed before his eyes; every time he recalled that screaming sound, he would experience the painful, vomiting sensation all over again.

Powerful memories had instead become a kind of burden; he could not discard part of them, so he could only temporarily seal them away, only to recall them again when accidentally triggered.

Sitting on the stairs, he would uncontrollably recall the image of tentacles hanging down from above; the wildly dancing branches were still before his eyes. Peeling open the furrowed, crisscrossing skin, the structure beneath would feel familiar to him even if scrambled a thousand times.

In repeated recollections, whether active or passive, the familiarity that flashed at that time was refined into a gradually maturing hypothesis.

This soul, one part studied medicine, the other part played with swords; it was certainly not some naturalist who cared deeply about animals other than humans. The understanding brought by animal experiments was far below his main profession's level, so from beginning to end, the only structure Kraft understood best was one—humans.

He shivered.

This matter did not fit logic; in this place that already lacked logic, it had a bit of logic.

Kraft held the wooden handrail and walked upward; the chill followed like a shadow, cold like wet clothes stuck to the body, impossible to say whether it was spiritual or physical.

The old, rotten wooden boards beneath his feet emitted a harsh, grating creaking sound, which, in the silence, sounded like some withered groans.

He quickened his pace, fleeing from this staircase that seemed to have accelerated its pace of decay; the grating sound clung to his heels, stopping the moment he stepped onto the second floor, falling behind and no longer sounding.

This gave him a strange sense of relaxation, as if he had escaped some pursuit; the massive stimulation did not desensitize him to fear, but instead made him suspicious of everything, generating unexplained, tiny panics over changing details, unless deliberately suppressed by reason.

Could reason, which originated from logic, still be invincible in this place? Kraft pondered this question but found no answer.

Water that had not been wrung out dripped and splashed down the sleeves and pant legs onto the floor, leaving a trail of water stains behind him. He was not the only wet thing here; the dampness, rising with the increasing water level, had also spread upward.

The second floor also seemed filled with invisible water vapor; the wooden floor beneath his feet had a subtle, wet softness, and a thin film of water could be felt on the walls, the kind of saturated dampness found only during the rainy season.

This inn had been in a humid environment for some time; it did not seem like the tide had rushed into the first floor in the middle of the night, but rather that it had been soaked by water for several days. No need to think; his own room was surely like this too, with nothing that could be ignited.

Standing at the door, he reached out and pushed the water-droplet-covered door panel, but it would not open; it was actually stuck by the door bolt on the inside.

Kraft was stunned; he reached into his pocket, but felt nothing; the door bolt he had casually put in on the first level was gone, and here was another completely new locked room.

"Damn ghost place."

Leaning against the door panel, he temporarily lost his objective, unable to think of what to do for a moment.

The world of normal human life had always been called by him the "real world," so the deep layers were naturally assumed to be an existence like a dream; the reset door bolt confirmed his hypothesis to some extent.

Perhaps Kraft's body was still lying on the bed brewing cervical spondylosis, and only the non-material part, such as the soul, had been dragged in; thinking this way, it was still reasonable.

The problem was that dreams always end; he did not know if he could automatically return, and he did not know if the time consumed here was unequal to reality, as in a dream.

Kraft, locked outside his own room, leaned against the door panel and fell into thought once more.

Of course, he wanted to return, to completely get rid of this place. Currently, there were two paths:

He could wait here dryly, hoping to wake up naturally like in a dream. But even if he got out, sooner or later he would have to sleep again, and then be pulled in by that glowing tentacle monster.

Or there might exist more radical choices that could increase understanding of this place and grasp a bit of initiative... for example, go out for a stroll?