Chapter 76: Indirect Means, Direct Means

It jumped up quite abruptly, with no prior warning before this observation.

When he came to his senses completely, Kraft realized his hand was already pressed against the small prism in his sleeve, subconsciously preparing to adjust the depth of observation.

This action was as natural as leaning in when vision blurs, pulling closer to see clearly. Just before diving, he suddenly realized his own behavior was strange and severed his mental senses.

【When?】

When did he become so accustomed to touching the deep layers? It had only been half a month, yet he had progressed to the point of instinctively wanting to dive and use his mental senses to "examine closely," as effortlessly as stepping through a doorway.

Kraft pulled the prism from his sleeve, placed it firmly on the grid chart, and moved himself away. Now was not the time for a reckless dive.

The abrupt change in the depth of the mental form had a high probability of being caused by something moving below. The experience in the Salt Tide Zone during the day was still vivid; besides being unable to enter the present world directly, it far surpassed Kraft, a后天 user, in depth control.

Approaching the deep layers now was like clearly exposing oneself to its vision; confronting something capable of dragging people into the deep layers in the very aspect it excelled at, even after losing control and falling, one might not get a chance to ignite.

"Cannot rush, cannot rush."

A new candle was lit, and the observation interval returned to once per candle. Even if the speed doubled, it would not be that fast to pull Kup down; he needed time to understand its movement patterns.

Kraft stared at the candlelight; the flame flickered, and dripping wax slid down the candle body, leaving behind a long, solidified strip of wax marks that hardened step by step.

He frequently looked at Kup, whose breathing remained calm, his chest rising and falling slowly, exactly as before. Once he realized something was happening, the originally plain and boring wait became agonizing; not being able to see this process of change made it especially torturous.

Through simple data comparing the degree of fading, you know it has arrived, approaching this place, and in some unique way, violently dragged the human mental form down a segment.

Anxiety and fear made one want to activate mental vision senses, observing the changes in Kup's mental form non-stop, using the currently only feasible indirect method to understand its movements, but reason clearly pointed out that this action was absolutely unfeasible.

The cost of momentarily yielding to emotional impulse would be completely losing sight in the next half, losing the ability to monitor its actions and the means to respond.

Kraft felt Kup was trapped in an iron coffin submarine constantly sinking in the deep sea, with unknown creatures wandering outside, occasionally stirring the water currents, accelerating his drag toward the dark abyss of the deep seabed.

And his own eyes could only stare at a malfunctioning gauge that intermittently displayed depth, learning of its arrival by comparing the data of two sudden drops, daring not to lean close to the porthole to take even a glance, because witnessing it would also result in being gazed back at.

He hallucinated the sound of water outside the window, which vanished in an instant; under psychological influence, he momentarily could not distinguish whether he was in the deep layers or the present world, but it was certainly lurking in the deep layers' tide surging into the city, swimming nearby.

An invisible influence acted upon the connected mental form, accelerating the sinking. There was no way to know how it managed this; while possessing this ability itself, it could still influence the depth of others.

If it collided with him during the sinking process, Kraft could foresee the outcome: uncontrolled sinking, plummeting toward the deep layer surface, and being ambushed before adapting.

A long candle's time passed; the mental senses were activated, eagerly inspecting the degree of fading of the mental form, which was slightly higher than the one-grid level.

Roughly, the fading speed was one standard unit every fifteen minutes on average, about the same as just now, perhaps slightly faster. Since only two points were taken since the rise, it was not very certain.

The confirmed sudden rise in data actually made Kraft feel a bit more relieved; half the night had passed, and at this speed, it was not too dangerous.

What to worry about was the current physical state; the throbbing pain on the side of the skull intensified, indicating insufficient rest after frequently activating mental senses; he felt internal tissues swelling, pressing against the shell, as if trying to push the tightly bound cranial sutures apart.

This was an illusion; symptoms of increased intracranial pressure, besides headache, should manifest as blurred vision and vomiting; he had not reached that stage yet, could endure one more observation interval of a single candle, but afterwards, the interval would have to be lengthened.

"One more time..." The flame lit up again; Kraft leaned back in his chair, emptied his mind, and seized the precious rest time.

The burning speed felt too slow when he wanted it fast, and too fast when he wanted it slow; the accumulated pain had not diminished much, and the time for another measurement arrived. The mental senses swept over Kup, yielding a new change value.

【Three-quarters of a grid】

"Hmm?" Pressing his temple with the middle knuckle, Kraft endured the pain to mark the new point; the progress speed had slowed down. "What does this mean this time?"

Waiting for two candles to burn out, the measured rate returned to the previous gentle amplitude. Contrary to imagination, the sinking speed of Kup's mental form indicated that the creature dragging him was not acting continuously.

Did it stay nearby for a while, then leave?

The next detection continued at a gentle speed; the double rest time gave Kraft a chance to recover some energy. He sensed this would not be the end; the short nap was like a prelude to a wave peak.

【Three grids】

"Hiss..." Kraft sucked in a sharp breath, half from the headache returning, half from the drastic change in numbers. The dotted line formed by the points turned a steep angle, heading straight for forty.

A faint sound came from the window; his hand pressed on the sword hilt, the blade unsheathed a few inches, his rough, heavy breathing rose and fell, and then he realized it was just the sea breeze pushing the loosely fitted window shutters.

Reason repeatedly told him he was in the present world, but emotion returned to the deep layers' tide sounds, unable to suppress imagining the possibility of wet limbs slapping against the window lattice. Its position in the deep layers had approached, closer than last time.

But what was it doing before? What happened during the intervals?

Kraft stood up and paced; the regular footsteps somewhat soothed his inner discomfort; the development of events did not quite match his expectations.

【Two grids】

After the peak of sinking, the speed slowed down, not unexpectedly. He began to reconsider what these two peaks meant.

In the earliest expectation, that thing would keep pulling Kup toward the deep layers, just like pulling himself down, but in reality, this process was intermittent.

Even though the depth of the mental form had already broken through forty, not far from the critical point, the sinking speed slowed down again, with no intention of plunging into the deep layers in one go; could it possibly be that it didn't want to?

That meant this ability had limitations, whatever kind they were; the intervals were the gaps left behind. At least three candles' time, about forty-five minutes, separated the two accelerations.

"It's getting interesting." Kraft marked this period on the paper, lit a candle, and waited for the next monitoring.

This time, he simply rested for a full three candles' time; after the last one burned out, he monitored the depth; the gentle sinking speed matched expectations.

Connecting the two consecutive monitorings within the next candle, the sudden rising process was caught. In the time after burning half a candle, the depth growth rate began to change; it could be noticed that the depth was one-third of a grid more than in the first half.

After two candles, Kup's mental form was completely dragged to the critical point; the severe fading sensation was already close to what Kraft had seen in the deep layers.

That desolate fading spread outward from the mental form, enveloping the entire body, and expanding outward, resembling the pitiful people petrified by the gaze of the snake-woman in myths, losing the colors representing the present world.

After diving to a certain depth, the mental form became the medium through which the deep layers reacted upon the present world. In the mental vision, the colors around Kup flowed away like sand in an hourglass, falling into emptiness and disappearing, making it impossible to distinguish whether it was the present world or the deep layers.

It was as if a thumbtack temporarily pinned the present world and the deep layers together, connecting the two layers, causing a small-scale overlap.

The fading proceeded with difficulty, slowly but firmly; Kraft did not turn off his mental senses, but glanced at the candle; there was not much time left for this accelerated sinking; if it was going to do something, it would be now.

He grabbed the prism from the table and fixed it into his sleeve. His memory was very good; he would not forget the promise made a few hours ago. If he was going to do something, it would be now.

Amidst the difficult progress, the degree of fading jumped forward a small segment without warning, like a last-ditch effort by an exhausted person; this tiny fraction, insignificant compared to the whole, made the mental form truly cross the critical point, reaching the deep layer level.

The fading burst forth from the mental form, instantly enveloping the surroundings; the spatially consistent deep layers and present world underwent a chaotic overlap and interweaving; a feeling of disordered distortion flashed by, as if a substitution had occurred.

The two inverted and reversed; centered on the mental form, the present world fell into the deep layers, and the deep layers perfectly replaced the present world; this small area was replaced by the corresponding, visually identical deep layers.

Without the mental form as a medium, the connection broke; the faded part was assimilated by the present world, filled with full "colors," appearing as if nothing happened, except for the fact that Kup had been dragged into the deep layers.

【Mental form as a bridge】

Kraft had no time to sigh at his deepened understanding of the mechanism of entering the deep layers; he knew the waiting opportunity had arrived. Gripping the prism, he sank steadily under mental mediation; the world dimmed, and the atmosphere surged.

Blurred, writhing figures precipitated within the sensing range as the depth approached, floating up in the deep layers' water waves; it noticed the uninvited guest crossing the layers.

Its depth changed at the moment of mutual confirmation, yet it stopped abruptly, unwillingly retreating into the deep layers to emit a silent roar.

The roar transformed into invisible, formless ripples of vibration that spread out, sweeping across the entire mental vision, resembling the deep oscillations Kraft felt when first approaching the small prism, but with far smaller amplitude.

The depth oscillated uncontrollably back and forth; the prism in his hand resonated and trembled, its colors chaotically shifting, clouding his thoughts and agitating his consciousness, nearly causing him to lose control of the depth and plummet downward.

The hypothesis was correct: its abilities had temporarily exhausted during the dragging of Kup; this was the final, weakened strike it could make, temporarily powerless to launch any further influence from the depth dimension, so it turned to waving its tentacles to alter its spatial position.

Having narrowly resisted the oscillations, Kraft adjusted his speed and, upon arriving steadily at the deep layer, received via his mental senses the message of a massive soft body climbing the outer wall; the noisy roars grew louder, and blinding white light pierced through the window gaps, shining onto Kup's face, who was still asleep.

The light tumors and vocal cords extended from the water along with the tentacles; within the mental vision, human bones and muscles supported and drove its ascent, as if reassembled from drowned corpses dissolving in water, striving to climb back into the world.

Its prey for this journey heard the terrifying sound in its sleep; its facial expression twisted, yet it still could not escape the solid dream cage illuminated by the white light.

In desperation, he could only first ignite the brazier, fetch a torch, light it, and hold it in his hand. After several expenditures, the time his mental senses could sustain was nearly gone, but he had no opportunity to first sever the connection and wait for the side effects to pass.

The penetrating vision provided by the mental senses saved Kup's life; Kraft judged that only a few seconds remained before it reached the window, so he took three steps as two, rushed to the bedside, grabbed Kup's arm, and dragged him toward the other side of the room.

The deafening roar reached its peak as Kup was dragged off the bed; all the tentacles withdrew from the water and used their sound-emitting branches attached to the outer wall to play a discordant symphony.

A sound unprecedented, playing out anger and resentment at such a fragile, insignificant thing daring to damage its body, transmitting negative emotions that struck directly at the soul. The fellow who had now侥幸 escaped its grasp actually dared to obstruct its hunting; it was simply incomprehensible.

The terrifying sound shook the spirit, making even the long-tested Kraft dizzy and disoriented, and also woke Kup, who was being dragged.

He opened his eyes, waking from the absurd nightmare given by his brain, to face another, even more real, unending nightmare.

The window exploded; the writhing, glaring light source and layers upon layers of human-like yet non-human roars poured into the room; vision and hearing were saturated with stimulation, conveying information never before experienced, containing unmasked malice, while the will was battered and shattered like a broken plank in a giant wave.

That was the evil that priests, bishops, and the like could neither imagine nor describe throughout their entire lives; a profound fear that even molten iron falling into hell or the minions of evil spirits could not compare to.

A truly existing, terrifying, blasphemous entity; witnessing its form could crush human will—how could one survive and record it in scriptures?

It squeezed into the room through the window, crashing onto the floor with a thick and heavy echo; writhing clusters of maggots or long, dense sea-snake-like things appeared in the light, growing on writhing, glowing giant tentacles, scratching at the void and the minds of witnesses. Some other faint sounds were once again covered by the erupting roar.

He weakly and blindly flailed his limbs in struggle, like a mackerel jumping on a chopping block; instinctively wanting to escape, his chaotic consciousness directed his uncooperative muscles to turn these commands into ridiculous twitches.

In his loosened palm, a silver coin with patterns melted and skewed fell, rolling into the shadows.

But he was indeed retreating; a steady, cast-iron-like force gripped his right hand, moving him away from the source of terror, like a hard rock amidst a roaring tide.

In his peripheral vision, a black sleeve trembled incessantly, yet the force transmitted from it did not diminish by half.

A burning torch was thrown from behind, passed over his shoulder, flew across the bed, and plunged straight into that unspeakable "thing."

Intense flames bloomed, turning it into a large fireball; it burned and roared, its wildly dancing tentacles attempting to grab everything within reach, drawing the wooden bed and chairs within range into this grand conflagration.

He watched those twisted, writhing things curl and deform within the flames; his spirit exhausted by excessive stimulation, he fortunately lost consciousness, falling into a dark, tranquil coma, no longer needing to endure the torment.