Bad News

Kraft's hand trembled as he held the bottle, and he nearly flung it away. He immediately tightened his grip, holding on to the bottle to keep himself from losing control and smashing it.

In his terror, he found an anchor for his reason. After experiencing things beyond the imagination of ordinary people, his mind seemed to have undergone some unknown change, becoming harder to shake.

It couldn't have thoughts of its own. It was only a tiny amount of liquid, with no basis for developing the ability to think.

The liquid was merely influencing him somehow, not speaking to him directly. The impulsive thoughts he'd just had were, at their core, made up of things already in his own mind.

His curiosity about new things, his plan to conduct animal experiments, and the fact that the professor and Lucius had swallowed diluted liquid—these things had been dredged up and pieced together, producing a new idea that would help release it from the bottle.

Driven by his intense curiosity, his brain had put all these pieces together on its own. Its "persuasion" had only provided the most basic appeal; the rest had been completed by Kraft's own mind.

The principle wasn't complicated. It was like a scammer calling with an emergency but not explaining the details, creating only overwhelming anxiety. The panicked victim imagined the rest.

All it took was a basic impulse, like a lever prying open the whole situation. It used reasons from its target's subconscious to manipulate them, a method that could work on anyone—even any living creature.

"That's fascinating." Kraft raised the little bottle and exclaimed in admiration. He didn't know what mechanism it used to affect his emotions, but the idea was ingenious.

If it really was some kind of unusual life-form, then it was far more sophisticated than an anglerfish's lure.

In fact, it had nearly succeeded. Two people had already acted irrationally as it wanted, allowing it to achieve its goal of coming into contact with more living creatures with ease.

At least a few mice and two people had come into direct contact with the Black Fluid.

There was one more thing he couldn't figure out: what was the point? Lucius didn't seem all that different at the moment, so what was it trying to accomplish?

Was it a parasite living in liquid? Bacteria? Or a virus? Seeking to spread was simply a way to proliferate on a larger scale, multiplying and reproducing endlessly in a pointless cycle of replication.

It had been more than ten days since Lucius came into contact with it. He showed no physical abnormalities, and it was hard to judge his mental state for now.

Was the amount too small, or did the Black Fluid simply not cause drastic short-term changes? Could the mice used in the experiments provide an answer?

Kraft carefully set the bottle on another table and asked Lucius, who was holding the candleholder, "Do you remember if anything happened to the mice you fed the diluted liquid to? I mean, apart from them falling unconscious."

"No." Lucius shook his head. "There were fourteen mice in total, and the professor dissected all of them. We didn't observe them long-term, not even after the last experiment."

"If you feel unwell, please make sure to tell me right away." Kraft patted Lucius on the shoulder, then glanced at the bottle on the table. "Honestly, I think this stuff is dangerous. Unless we have to, we'd better not touch it."

Kraft couldn't explain to Lucius what he'd sensed. When he consciously resisted it, the Black Fluid couldn't force anyone into extreme actions. Especially after he moved away, its influence quickly weakened until it was almost impossible to detect.

"Seriously, I'm not joking. We should keep as far away from it as we can. Don't you think it's strange that you were so ready to drink the diluted liquid?" he added. His attitude made him seem like a timid old scholar, willing to give up a precious opportunity over the tiniest risk.

But Kraft knew this was the best choice. When dealing with something beyond comprehension, something that seemed alive and inclined to spread, one couldn't be too careful.

If he weren't afraid of making things worse, he'd have preferred to leave, lock the door, and bury the cellar under a pile of dirt. He wouldn't set foot in there again until the professor returned and figured everything out.

This wasn't something he should be touching, just like the gift he'd brought back from "beyond the cave." It didn't belong to anything within human understanding. He hadn't even begun to consider whether he was willing to pay the price of delving too deeply.

He rejected this change, rejected paying any unknown price. He'd lifted a corner of the curtain and been stunned by what he saw, but didn't have the courage to face the whole picture.

At least for now, he had no good reason to leap into this mess.

"Fine, fine." Lucius picked up the glass bottle and gave it a shake. The black liquid rolled inside, struck the thick glass, then finally settled at the bottom.

He opened the cupboard and put the bottle back. But just as he raised it, Lucius stopped moving.

He held the bottle at eye level for a few seconds, then put it back on the table. Under the candlelight, he crouched until his eyes were level with the tabletop and rotated the bottle a few times.

Then, in a disbelieving voice, he said, "It looks like there's a little less?"

"A little less?"

"Yeah, look at this line." Lucius brought the candleholder closer and pointed to a spot near the bottom of the bottle so Kraft could see more clearly.

There was a small scratch there, faint and easy to miss. It was so inconspicuous that Kraft hadn't noticed it at all.

Lucius put a hand on Kraft's shoulder and had him bend down, bringing his eyes level with the scratch near the table.

"I made that mark on the last day before the professor left. The liquid level should line up with it. I thought something looked off when I took the bottle out just now."

"Are you sure?"

"I thought it was just the angle at first." Lucius's breathing behind his mask grew heavy and rapid. He reached up to straighten his lenses and adjust the beak of his mask, then crouched to table level and checked again.

It was true. Using the scratch as a reference, there was a clear difference in the liquid's level. Roughly a quarter of it was gone.

There had been so little liquid to begin with. Without the scratch for comparison, it would have been hard to make a definite judgment based on memory and intuition alone.

"Could it have evaporated?" Kraft asked. People in this world knew about the three states of matter, but they were still at the stage of thinking the white mist above a kettle was water vapor and that they couldn't usually see it because it was too faint and insubstantial.

"No, that's not right." Kraft immediately rejected his own guess.

He remembered that the professor had left only seven days ago, while the experiments had gone on for more than ten days, and only a little liquid had been taken each time. There hadn't been much to begin with. If it had evaporated that noticeably, they would have noticed long ago.

Considering how little there was, it might even have evaporated completely on the way to Wenden Port, leaving none behind now.

"Evaporation? That seems unlikely." Lucius also dismissed the idea. He was deeply puzzled and couldn't understand how this had happened.

"Besides the professor and you, could anyone else have come in here?" Kraft pressed. It was the most reasonable explanation he could think of at the moment. If it wasn't that, then the Black Fluid must have moved on its own.

Lucius slipped a hand into his pocket. Inside was the sturdy metal lock that hung on the door, along with its key. His fingers brushed against it, and the cold metal reassured him.

"That's impossible, too. Only the professor and I have keys. Unless someone could pick the lock and then hang it back exactly as it was—but this lock isn't easy to deal with." Lucius rejected the idea again.

He'd considered the possibility, too, but there was no reason for anyone at the Academy to do such a thing. A few secret experiments were perfectly normal, and most ended without any results at all. Not having secrets would be what was strange. Who would go to so much trouble to find someone else's secret laboratory?

As for someone from outside the Academy, never mind how they might have gotten in. Even if they'd accidentally stumbled across this place in the complex building, would they really have opened the lock, put it back, and taken just a little of some unknown liquid from a small bottle?

Could the Black Fluid really have grown legs and run away? Kraft was baffled. It didn't look capable of anything like that. Surely it hadn't popped the stopper, escaped in part, and then put the stopper back?

If it really could do something that outrageous, why would it need to lure living creatures into contact with it?

Amid a flood of questions, Kraft ruled out several possibilities one after another. The whole incident was shrouded in sudden confusion.

But there was one other possibility.

"This may sound strange, but there's no one else here. I want to ask—did the professor know you'd made that mark?" Kraft asked. His eyes behind the red lenses fixed on Lucius, waiting for him to say that the professor had known.

"..." Lucius fell silent. He seemed to be thinking, or perhaps didn't know how to answer. But his silence was an answer in itself.

The atmosphere in the room grew slightly tense. Professor Calman should have been the last person to raise suspicions. Kraft had only brought him up in passing, never expecting there to be a problem.

After hesitating for a while, Lucius picked up the bottle from the table, then set it down again. He didn't offer an opinion, only revealing what he knew. "I scratched it with a little piece of stone, just to estimate how much we'd use in future experiments. I didn't tell the professor."

Things were starting to develop in the direction Kraft least wanted.

Professor Calman had conducted all his experiments with Lucius, even leaving him to organize the experiment records. As the professor's academic successor, Lucius had been told practically everything. The professor might not have been this close even with his own son.

What reason could he have had for secretly taking a quarter of the Black Fluid before he left, without Lucius knowing?

It definitely wasn't for animal experiments. There was no need to keep those from Lucius, and having another person there would obviously have been more convenient.

The two of them put the bottle back in the cupboard, leaving behind the box of experiment records. After locking the door and concealing it behind the box, they left the cellar without a word.

Lucius seemed a little dejected, but patiently explained to Kraft when and where he would be teaching as a lecturer, as well as the exact location of the house the professor had left for him. He only said goodbye after making sure Kraft had no questions.

Kraft thanked him and watched his tired figure disappear down the corridor. He knew what Lucius was thinking.

The man he regarded as half a father hadn't trusted him completely, as he'd expected. He was surely wondering whether he'd done something wrong, or failed to demonstrate the abilities Calman expected of him.

The self-doubt might have hit him hard. He'd find either explanation difficult to accept, and it would probably take him several days to recover.

Kraft didn't comfort Lucius. He didn't know how. He had plenty of his own problems to figure out, and Calman's secrecy was bad news for him, too.

A liquid with a strange tendency to influence people, the distorted, bizarre characters in the notes the professor had left behind, and part of the sample that had gone missing...

He stood in the corridor, its length painted crimson by the setting sun, and drew in a deep breath, as if trying to suck the shadows of the long pillars and the dust dancing in the beams of light into his lungs.

A familiar yet unfamiliar, nameless scent seemed to linger in his nose and mouth, making him instinctively feel it shouldn't be there. Yet when he focused on his sense of smell, he couldn't catch it.

Ever since he'd entered this building, the more he learned, the more obvious it became. It was there among the spread-out experiment records, lingering in the basement, appearing at every moment when Kraft received an insight.

Kraft jolted awake, finally understanding why it felt familiar. It was a faint but undeniable quality—indescribable, incomprehensible, something that shouldn't exist in this world.

"Fuck!" The otherworldly part of his soul couldn't help blurting out a curse from home. "That really is bad news."

He'd already encountered something of the same kind, a countless number of times more intense, on that snowy night. This was merely a reunion, whether by chance or inevitability.