Notes

By candlelight, Kraft spread out the papers.

He was staying at the same inn in Wenden Port where he had stayed on his last visit, even in the very same room.

That night, Kraft had stood outside the lodgings the professor had provided, key in hand, hesitating for quite some time. In the end, he had turned around and gone back to the inn.

It wasn't that he had lost faith in the professor. It was just that the various things that had happened suggested Calman wasn't in a very sound state of mind, and people in that state were rarely reliable.

Besides, before he left, his grandfather had given him enough money to settle in Wenden Port. So Kraft had decided to make do at the inn, attend classes for a few days, and then look for a long-term place to stay.

Now, he planned to sort through everything he had experienced in writing, recording what he knew in a reliable, permanent form.

Having been deeply influenced by his grandfather, he was quite willing to classify these events as "Anomalous Phenomena." They were certainly strange enough. Once bound together, the notes could be called a record of Anomalous Studies.

First, based on his own experience, he could draw a tentative conclusion: so far, the Anomalous Phenomena he had encountered had all been subject to limitations.

Whether it was the hallucinations and fever triggered by the stone pillar, or the Black Fluid's influence over people, he had only been affected after approaching and seeing something real and material.

He had reason to suspect that the Black Stone Pillar found in the village fields had a limited range of influence, which was why it had caused the local "Fever Disease." Moreover, only some people could be affected by it, though the conditions were unknown.

The Black Fluid, meanwhile, had to be brought right in front of someone before it could exert a noticeable influence. But its effect seemed easier to trigger: Professor Calman, Lucius, and Kraft had all been affected.

In short, these limitations meant that there had to be a real "medium" within the knowable world, and that one had to see it and enter a certain range. The person exposed to it might even need to meet certain conditions for it to take effect.

This conclusion was also why Kraft was still planning to go back to class. After locking everything away in the secret laboratory, he felt somewhat reassured. All he had to do next was keep an eye on Lucius.

If circumstances allowed, he also wanted to check for anything else they might have failed to clean up, and deal with it. Ideally, he would find out what had happened to the samples the professor had taken for himself.

Lock away what needed locking up, bury what needed burying deep, and hide everything. Then, when the professor returned, Kraft would give him a thorough lesson in laboratory safety.

There was no denying that Kraft was taking quite a gamble. His first encounter had ended without incident, and the second had been nothing compared to the first. That had led him to think that these things were no different to guard against than certain contagious diseases, and perhaps could even be linked to the magic in novels.

On the other hand, he couldn't just leave it all alone for now. There were people he knew involved, it was the only Medical School nearby, and, well... he would have to count on them in the future.

After reassuring himself that "nothing will happen if I don't touch it," Kraft wrote down his second point:

As mentioned in the first point, the medium did not affect everyone indiscriminately.

He seemed more sensitive to the differences in the medium, more able to recognize the existence of "Anomalies," and reacted differently from other people. In other words, he was a special case.

The village doctor had mentioned that no one who caught the "Fever Disease" in the village had survived longer than two days, yet Kraft had somehow pulled through. He was also the only one who had inexplicably realized that the Black Fluid was enticing living things to touch it.

Kraft listed two possibilities: either his trained body was exceptionally healthy and his senses sharp, which explained the difference,

or it was a side effect of his "transmigration." Perhaps the merging of two souls had given him special treatment, like one of those deals where you got more for the same price?

Hmm. He'd make a note of it for now. Maybe someday he'd have the misfortune of getting a chance to test his theory.

There was another point about the Black Fluid itself that he needed to keep in mind: he didn't understand why it enticed living things to touch it or even swallow it. What was the point?

The worst possibility he could come up with, based on his meager experience, was that it was some sort of magical parasite that needed to draw nutrients from other organisms. In that case, Lucius might seem normal for now because it hadn't breached the mucosal barrier of his digestive tract yet, or because it was still growing.

It was a helpless situation. If that turned out to be the case, even if Kraft noticed changes in Lucius, his skills would probably be useless. He could only take things one step at a time.

It was more likely that the Black Fluid served no purpose at all, like the "gift" Dream of the Snowy Night had left Kraft. Ordinary people could only understand and use the parts of such things that fell within the bounds of their own knowledge.

Calman thought it was the "Black Fluid" from Humorism. Kraft thought it had toxic effects on the central nervous system. The substance itself defied common sense, making it unsuitable for investigation and impossible to understand.

Kraft paused, drew a dividing line, and began a new section:

At any rate, for now, based on how they presented themselves, these things were like magic or curses in works of fiction. Their overt dangers were limited; they simply couldn't be fully understood.

Frankly, worrying about them was less worthwhile than worrying about the outbreak of some infectious disease. That was what could most easily cause chaos in this era, and it was the prospect that frightened Kraft most after learning about the current state of medicine.

When all was said and done, his Otherworld Soul was just a soul that had transmigrated into another body. Not a single vaccination he'd received growing up had come with him. In an age without antibiotics or antiviral drugs, staying alive was pure luck.

He was already wondering how he could repackage the courses on Microbiology and Parasitology and teach them to everyone at the Medical School. Otherwise, if he ever caught something and they tried to treat him with bloodletting, it would be a real joke.

Finally, he returned to the matter at hand. To his surprise, Kraft realized he had already done everything he could.

He had isolated the Black Fluid and the experimental records. Next, he would observe Lucius whenever he went to class. That was all he could do.

Given the limitations of communication and transportation, it was impossible for him to catch up with Professor Calman and get to the bottom of everything. Besides, Calman wasn't the source of it all.

In distant Dunling, the heart of the kingdom, under the watchful eyes of the two great powers—the king and the Church—Professor Morrison had somehow created the Black Fluid.

He had even claimed that it had been extracted from a human body, and had asked Calman to come help study it in person. Judging by what they knew so far, there were problems with that claim everywhere you looked.

Most likely, it was a fraud based on Anomalous Phenomena. That would be the best-case scenario.

There was a small chance that every word Morrison had said was true. The implications were so terrifying they made Kraft's scalp tingle. It would mean Morrison had refined something from a human body that had no business being inside one. The more he thought about the logic, the more horrifying it became.

Kraft confirmed what he had thought that morning: he really had arrived too late, far too late.

The best time to stop this would have been if he'd transmigrated to Dunling and pinned Morrison down, telling him to go back to practicing proper medicine instead of messing around with Anomalous Studies.

The next best chance would have been to intercept the samples sent to Calman, preventing the series of experiments from taking place—and, above all, keeping him from secretly taking Black Fluid to do something he couldn't even tell Lucius about.

The last chance would have been a week ago, when he could have used his powerful powers of physical persuasion to knock some sense into two men so obsessed with their experiments that they'd lost their minds, and stopped Calman from going to Dunling.

But now, Calman's fast ship had been underway for a week. Kraft was stuck here, cleaning up after him, looking after Lucius, warily watching every possible trouble spot, and playing Sherlock Holmes in a baffling mystery.

He had never been good at solving puzzles, powerful mind or not. He put that ability to use in his own field, not in investigating cases. Figuring out how the professor's handwriting had changed in the experimental records was about the limit of his abilities.

The earliest experimental records were neatly written, and the letter had been prepared at that time as well.

After that, the professor's handwriting gradually became more and more erratic, growing increasingly twisted and distorted until it turned into illegible symbols.

One thing was certain: the professor's mental state had deteriorated steadily. Kraft could only hope that, before leaving, he hadn't used the Black Fluid to do something major that Kraft would be unable to handle.

There was plenty to do, but very little he could actually manage. At the end, Kraft, thoroughly disgusted by all of it, summed up the situation for now:

Keep your distance. Keep it sealed. Do not make contact unless absolutely necessary.