Chapter 68: Déjà Vu

It is well known that, aside from minerals, true straight lines are extremely rare in nature; living organisms possess at most "relatively straight" forms, rarely achieving geometric straightness.

Especially impossible is a structure with several distinct edges like this.

It possesses a clear sense of presence, lying diagonally amidst the burning debris, complete and regular, as if the great fire that just occurred never happened, and everything was unrelated to it.

The feeling of instability grew stronger; he felt as though he were being thrown up and then dropped, yet his vision showed his feet firmly stuck to the ground. Only the sensory feedback oscillated, mutually contradictory and conflicting.

Dizziness and nausea, similar to benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, as if something were violently shaking his semicircular canals, causing the endolymph inside to churn back and forth, creating a motion illusion through high-frequency, intense stimulation.

Clearly, this represented a signal beyond what an ordinary person could accept, manifesting as oscillations in position and kinesthetic sense, which Kraft could not interpret.

He did not even dare to move his body casually; false sensations would guide completely wrong reactions, causing a person to fall straight down stiffly.

Stripped of its shell's encapsulation and isolation, this thing seemed to have its stability disrupted, reverting to a more primitive and wild initial state, unleashing and displaying its original nature without limit, hiding nothing.

After several rounds of oscillation, its effects were adapted to. Kraft grasped the essence of this sensation: short-distance falls and reverse movements occurring on a conceptual plane beyond three-dimensional space, transmitted from the spiritual senses and reflected in the position and motion sensors.

At this point, he had to admit that in this bizarre and colorful world, humanity's basic configuration was insufficient; he needed the aid of entirely new senses to understand it.

"Truly terrible, I thought it would be easier." Kraft cursed, voluntarily connecting to the spiritual senses and silently counting down in his mind.

【30】

The field of vision suddenly expanded; a 360-degree, blind-spot-free circle of information radiated outward from himself. His spirit spread through charred bones, saw through the floor, and sensed wooden crates floating in the water below.

The pressure on the position sensors lightened, replaced by novel feedback from the spirit. The body regained correct sensation. Balance reflexes activated, the body made micro-adjustments to its posture, and the tendency to fall stopped.

【25】

In the spiritual senses, he was indeed moving; violent changes were occurring around him, imperceptible to vision.

Compared to the experience of expanding the spiritual vision in the present world, a clear distinction emerged: everything here was less... tangible, having lost certain elements, making them appear monotonous and dull, as if faded.

Although the form and volume were similar and the internal structure completely consistent, a difference could still be perceived—a "lack of reality" discoverable only through comparison, a "color" in the spiritual sense.

An intangible atmosphere drifted through every inch of space, like smoke, yet also like water pressure, exerting a weak but unignorable force on the spirit.

That phrasing was not accurate enough; Kraft preferred to describe it as an effect on the "non-material plane," manifesting in the form of spiritual pressure.

【23】

The water-pressure-like intangible atmosphere quickly lightened, just like rising from water, corresponding to a movement in the positional illusion opposite to the fall.

The lost elements returned; things became "bright and colorful" in the spiritual vision, regaining their hues, as if a black-and-white draft framework had been colored in, filled with content, and transformed into a full-color image.

Even while standing still, a familiar plane was approaching him, while a deeper plane was receding.

【20】

However, this transformation was not fully completed; the speed gradually slowed and halted just before completion, like the ninety-nine percent progress bar everyone hates most, exhausting itself right there.

The color in the spiritual senses was lost, the pressure of the intangible atmosphere returned, he was falling into the depths, and the feeling of losing support surged over him.

Everything in all things, except for their form, was flowing away and being stripped away; the familiar yet indescribable parts inside faded, revealing gray and ominous implications within the spiritual world.

Ordinary human senses could not observe the truth of their birth and the world's departure; only the spiritual senses granted by the deep could witness the process of falling into an abnormal abyss.

【15】

When the fall reached maximum speed, it moved closer to a deeper level by inertia.

The next layer, unknown and even darker, had an increasingly dense intangible atmosphere. Yet the fall also stopped just before entering, changing toward the opposite trend, repeating the return to the present world.

【12】

The spiritual perspective revealed the essence of the oscillation: it was a back-and-forth change in "depth," a distinct independent concept separate from space, causing the illusion of high-speed movement while standing still.

Kraft focused his consciousness on that object and observed it within the spiritual vision.

【10】

For the first time, the invincible spiritual senses encountered an obstacle.

Spiritually, it was judged to be an oscillating entity, completely different from other materials whose internal structures were easily analyzed.

It was something that could not be penetrated, and even difficult to approach; continuous waves of oscillation emanated from it, ceaselessly back and forth.

Correspondingly, since the spiritual senses deemed it an entity, the spirit could naturally act upon it.

Just needed to get a little closer...

【5】

Kraft moved forward; in the plane of drastic change, a single step in space was insignificant, yet it truly closed the distance, an undeniable distance.

He switched the sword to his left hand and reached out with his right toward the geometric shape that appeared stationary in the visual feedback.

Passing over the piled gray bones, reaching into the core guarded by the spine, his fingertips brushed the cold straight edges, his palm pressed against the flat surface with concave and convex carvings, cold as if not a product of this land.

Under the cold, sinister gaze of the fifth cervical vertebra's smiling face, his five fingers closed, grasping it.

At this moment, the spiritual senses encountered obvious resistance, to the point where he felt his spirit was no longer a void existence, but an extended limb that could tangibly touch objects, except the targets it could act upon were rather special.

The geometric shape oscillated, with countless chaotic waves rising and falling.

As if by ghostly guidance, like an infant rolling over for the first time with their hands, Kraft found the side of the oscillation facing the present world and gave it a spiritual "push."

【0】

The countdown ended; he quickly disconnected the spiritual senses while simultaneously exerting force with his hand to pull backward.

The expected feeling of claustrophobia and narrowness, due to strict time control, was much better than the previous time; at least it was tolerable.

Or perhaps he was adapting to this sensation? The gap from switching back and forth had become less unacceptable.

The resistance to pulling it out was far smaller than imagined; excessive force caused his body to lose balance. Kraft stepped back several paces and fell onto something soft, panting heavily as the illusion of suffocation pressed in.

The spiritual senses were turned off; the dizziness, nausea, and imbalance did not reappear. Instead, a deep cognition of the layer changes, accurately recorded and retained by consciousness, remained in his mind.

"Cough, not bad." Kraft cleared his throat; the dust kicked up when pulling it out was quite heavy, and falling into his mouth would be disgusting just thinking about it.

No matter how short the claustrophobic reaction time was, subjectively it felt quite long; calculated roughly by heart rate, it was only five hundred-plus beats, yet subjectively it felt like being locked in a coffin for nearly half an hour. The experience was truly terrible.

An unexpected tactile sensation reminded him that something seemed wrong.

According to the position, he should have fallen onto a pile of burning charcoal from wooden beds, but in reality, he was sitting on an intact wooden bed, with his own rolled-up human-shaped quilt bundle behind his buttocks; he almost got a shock from the nails and wood chips inside.

The fire basin and its stand sat safely in place, with no burning debris; the windows were closed as usual, and the candle on the candelabra still had a small stub remaining.

【Present World】

He had returned, not by gazing directly at that celestial body, but via a new path back to the room in the Present World, just as before, awakening as from a dream.

Torn sleeve cuffs, congealed bloodstains, and that cold geometric object held in his hand—the thing that had inherited the layer-connecting ability of the writhing creature, or perhaps the relationship was exactly the reverse.

Visually, it should be a crafted artifact; its upper portion had been ground flat into a symmetrical hexagonal prism.

During processing, for unknown reasons, it was polished to conform to the original material's shape, so well joined to the untreated conical lower half that one could see it had originally been an elongated cone roughly the size of a sword hilt.

The material felt similar to stone, its color near gray-white, yet duller, more restrained, so pale that one doubted whether it even possessed "color"; it was none of the carving materials Kraft knew.

Its density was considerable; the lower half rose and fell in irregular arcs, resembling solidified magma, possibly some rock that had undergone molten high temperatures.

From top to bottom, lines tapering from fine to thick were carved into the ground side surfaces, densely distributed yet sharply distinct from one another; the ridges and grooves felt when grasped came from these lines.

The thick end pointed downward toward the conical tip, while the long, straight tail extended from above, flowing as one; the length possessed an obsessive-compulsive precision of symmetry, carrying a powerful, comet-fall-like sense of motion beyond the figure itself.

Kraft could not help but immerse himself in it, grasping the creator's intent within the unannotated, crude image—falling from the heavens.

【Meteorite】

Baseless, uncaused information echoed in his mind.

Its surface, melted and then solidified by extreme heat, was not an igneous rock brought by geological movement, but an extraterrestrial object fallen from the dark void, formed through friction with the atmosphere.

"Have I seen this somewhere before?"

Though the carved content was entirely different, the materials varied, and the sizes differed vastly, things of this style were indeed not seen for the first time.

The patterns ran from top to bottom, with extreme obsessive-compulsive symmetry, extraordinary compelling power, and a hexagonal-prism geometric configuration.

The object before him overlapped with a memory deep within; that snowy night, when it was about to be cast to the back of his mind, arrived before him again without warning, as dark, profound secrets whispered, revealing a terrifying truth that chilled the bones.

【Not Unique】

According to the pattern, the position corresponding to "above" upon it was the top face of the hexagonal prism.

There, a flawless, perfectly regular circle was deeply carved at the center; the clean, smooth circular surface was bright enough to reflect. Only a single horizontal mark passing through the center split it in two.