Notes

Under the candlelight, Kraft spread out the paper.

He was currently staying at the same inn he had used during his last visit to Wenden Port, occupying the very same room.

That night, Kraft had stood before the door of the lodging provided by the professor, key in hand, hesitating for a long while before ultimately turning back to the inn.

It wasn't that he had lost trust in the professor. It was simply that the various circumstances that had arisen reflected, from a side angle, that Professor Calman's mental state was not entirely normal; people in such a state rarely handled matters reliably.

Furthermore, before leaving for this trip, his grandfather had given him enough money to settle down in Wenden Port, so Kraft chose to make do at the inn for a few days while he attended classes and scouted for a long-term residence.

Now, he intended to use a written format to organize everything he had encountered, recording what he knew in a reliable and fixed form.

As someone deeply influenced by his grandfather, he was quite willing to categorize these events as "Anomalous Phenomenon"—they were certainly anomalous enough. Once bound into a notebook, it could be called "Anomalous Studies" notes.

First, based on his own personal experience, he could make a not-so-mature judgment: the Anomalous Phenomenon encountered thus far all had limitations.

Whether it was the hallucinations and fever triggered by the stone pillars as a medium, or the Black Fluid's induction of humans, he had only been affected after approaching and visually observing the actual, material objects involved.

He had reason to suspect that the black stone pillars found in the village fields had a limited range of influence, which was why the local "Fever Disease" had formed. Moreover, this influence could only be contacted by certain people, under unknown conditions.

The Black Fluid, meanwhile, had to be brought right in front of him before it could produce a clear, inducing tendency. Yet, this influence seemed easier to trigger; Professor Calman, Lucius, and Kraft had all been affected.

In short, this limitation meant that a "medium" actually existing within the knowable realm was required, as well as visual observation and entering a certain range. It might even require the person in contact to meet certain conditions to trigger it.

This conclusion was also the reason why Kraft was prepared to return to class. After locking everything away in the secret laboratory, he felt somewhat more at ease; for now, he just needed to keep a close eye on Lucius.

If conditions permitted, he would also check to see if there were any other things left uncleaned and resolve them along the way. It would be best to figure out where the samples the professor had taken for himself had gone.

Lock up what needed to be locked, bury what needed to be buried deeper, and hide everything away. Then, he would wait for the professor to return and give him a thorough lecture on laboratory safety.

It could not be denied that Kraft possessed a considerable amount of wishful thinking. In his two encounters, the first had been a close call, and the second was minor compared to the first, making him feel that these things were no different from contact-transmitted diseases in terms of prevention, at most linked to the magic found in novels.

On the other hand, he couldn't just leave these matters alone for the time being; after all, there were people he knew, it was the only Medical School in the vicinity, and after all... he would have to rely on them in the future.

After comforting himself with the thought that "nothing will happen if I don't touch it," Kraft noted down the second point:

As mentioned in the first point, the medium's effect on people was not indiscriminate.

He seemed more capable of sensing the peculiarities of the medium, realizing the existence of "anomalous" objects, and having reactions distinct from others, marking him as a special individual.

The village doctor had mentioned that no one in the village who caught the "Fever Disease" had survived more than two days, yet he had inexplicably pulled through. Furthermore, he was the only one who had, without reason, realized that the Black Fluid was inducing living beings to make contact with it.

Kraft listed two possibilities: either his exercised body was particularly healthy and his consciousness sharp, hence the difference.

Or, it was a side effect brought about by his "transmigration." Perhaps when two souls merged into one, it came with special treatment, like a product that offered more for the same price?

Hmm, note that down for now; perhaps one day he would unfortunately have the opportunity to verify his hypothesis.

There was one more point regarding the Black Fluid itself that required caution—he didn't understand why it induced living beings to contact or even ingest it, or what the point of it was.

The worst possibility he could think of, based on his meager experience, was that it was some magical version of a parasite that needed to derive nutrients from other organisms. Lucius's temporary normalcy might just be because it hadn't breached his digestive tract's mucosal barrier, or it was still in the process of developing and growing.

It was quite helpless to think about; if that were truly the case, even if Kraft noticed the changes in Lucius, his own skills would likely be of no use, and he could only take things one step at a time.

A greater possibility was that it had no meaning at all, similar to the "gift" left behind by the Dream of the Snowy Night; ordinary people could only understand and utilize the parts within their own cognitive range.

Calman thought it was the "Black Fluid" from Humorism, while Kraft thought it had central nervous system toxicity, and that it was inherently beyond common sense, unsuitable for investigation and impossible to be investigated.

Kraft paused, drew a dividing line, and started a new paragraph:

However, for the moment, these things appeared on the surface like the magic or curses found in literary works; their explicit harm was limited, they were simply impossible to be fully understood.

To be blunt, worrying about them was less important than worrying about a major epidemic of certain infectious diseases; that was the thing most likely to cause chaos in this era, and it was also the situation Kraft feared most after learning about the current level of medical science.

At the end of the day, his soul-transmigration was just that—a soul-transmigration. He hadn't brought over any of the vaccines he'd had since childhood. In an era without antibiotics or antiviral drugs, it was truly a pure gamble with one's life.

He was currently thinking about how to repackage the courses of Microbiology and Parasitology and instill them into the members of the Medical School, lest he get hit by a bloodletting therapy one day after falling ill himself; that would be a real disaster.

Finally, returning to the task at hand, Kraft unexpectedly discovered that the things he could do had already been completed.

He had finished isolating the Black Fluid and the experimental records, and he was prepared to observe Lucius every time he went to class; this was all he could do.

Limited by current communication and transportation, he couldn't possibly chase after Professor Calman to get to the bottom of everything, especially since the source of it all did not lie with Professor Calman.

In distant Dunling, the center of the kingdom, under the very noses of the two great powers—the King and The Church—that professor named Morrison had used some unknown method to create the Black Fluid.

He even claimed it was extracted from the human body, and had asked Calman to come over personally to help with the research. Combining the existing clues, the whole thing was practically riddled with red flags.

In all likelihood, it was a scam based on an Anomalous Phenomenon; that would be the best-case scenario.

In the unlikely event that every word Morrison said was true, the sheer terror of the situation would make one's scalp tingle. It would mean he had refined something from the human body that absolutely should not be in the human body, the logic of which was simply too terrifying to contemplate.

Kraft confirmed his thought from this morning: he had indeed arrived late, and he had arrived far too late.

The best time to stop this would have been to transmigrate to Dunling, pin that Morrison down, and make him go back to doing proper medicine instead of dabbling in Anomalous Studies.

The second best would have been to intercept the samples sent to Calman, preventing the series of experiments from happening, and certainly not letting him secretly take the Black Fluid to do things he couldn't even tell Lucius about.

The worst opportunity was a week ago, using his own formidable level of physical persuasion to knock some sense into the two guys who had become obsessed with their experiments, and stopping Calman from heading to Dunling.

But now, Calman's fast ship had already been gone for a week, and Kraft was trapped here cleaning up his mess, looking after Lucius, keeping a vigilant eye on every place that might go wrong, and guest-starring as Sherlock Holmes in a bewildering mystery.

He had never been the type of person good at deduction games, not even with his powerful consciousness; he used it more for his own profession rather than case investigation. Analyzing the changes in the handwriting within the professor's experimental records was his limit.

The earliest part of the experimental records was orderly, and the letters had been written at that time as well.

What followed was the process of the professor's handwriting gradually running wild, slowly twisting and deforming until it formed unrecognizable symbols.

It was certain that the professor's mental state was deteriorating day by day; one could only hope that before he left, he hadn't used the Black Fluid to do something major that Kraft couldn't handle.

There were many things to do, but very few that could be handled. At the end, Kraft, who deeply loathed this, made a summary for the current stage:

Keep your distance, ensure containment, and if not necessary, never make contact.