The Missing Part

Kraft looked around with his sword drawn. Including himself, only three people remained at the scene.

The middle-aged man who had gone to fetch water sat on the ground, his bucket having rolled several yards away. Water had spilled everywhere. He had just returned with it when Kraft suddenly struck the wooden wall behind him with his sword, startling him so badly that he dropped the bucket.

Lucius was trembling beside him. He had been standing closest to Kraft, and the sword had passed right by his waist. If it had been any closer, he would have met the same fate as the wooden wall.

He clutched his chest, the hand holding his case shaking uncontrollably. "So that thing was actually sharp?"

He had known for a while that Kraft owned a fine sword, but Kraft had always presented himself as a scholar and doctor, making the sword seem like no more than a symbol of his family's martial history.

No one had ever imagined that Kraft would actually draw it one day.

"I might have... had a nightmare?" Kraft looked around in bewilderment, sword in hand, but found no sign of any threat. Disappointed, he slid it back into its sheath. "Did anyone come near me just now?"

That uncanny malice had appeared and vanished in an instant, dissipating quickly in the sunlight like a soap bubble bursting, as though trying to slip away from his memory.

But his consciousness had faithfully recorded the sensation: a comfortable sinking, deeper and deeper, as something quietly drew near, wrapping itself in a warm, smooth shell and disguising itself as part of a soft dream.

The malice hidden deep within it, and the stark contrast exposed by the slightest flaw, left Kraft shaken as he thought back on it. It was like ripples suddenly spreading across his favorite cream soup, with irregular black shapes swimming through it—something repulsive lurking beneath the surface.

Kraft felt certain that he had encountered something, whether or not it had been a dream. The experience felt familiar, and it gave him a very bad feeling.

He peered through the gash he had cut into the wooden wall. The owner of the house had left long ago, and the cramped, dim space inside was completely empty. It was impossible for someone to hide in there, let alone pass through the wall and create the sensation he had felt.

Kraft walked over to the middle-aged man and bent down to help him up. "I'm terribly sorry. I assure you, it was just an accident. You've finished your work, so take the money and go home."

He reached out to brush the dust off the man's clothes, but then realized it was hard to say whether his clothes or the ground were dirtier. He abandoned the gesture and went to retrieve the bucket instead.

There was a little water left in it. Kraft simply poured it all out and watched the trickle drain away. It was neither cloudy nor full of debris. The clear water splashed a few specks of mud onto the ground and seeped into the soil.

It was much better than he had expected. He had thought the water would be so dirty that he wouldn't be able to see the bottom of the bucket.

Looking at it wasn't enough. He needed to take a bucket back and try it on a few animals at the Academy. Since everyone had run off, he could also take the opportunity to inspect the well.

He leaned against the rim and peered down. The depths were pitch-black, and he couldn't see the bottom. Standing over a well this deep brought on the fear of falling, and he couldn't help imagining himself dropping through the narrow space toward the cold, dark water.

It was as if the well led to another world, utterly unlike the one reached by sunlight. A long, lightless tunnel ended at a gateway.

The bucket, tied to a rope, descended along the well wall, bumping against it until it touched the water's surface.

Kraft wrapped the rope twice around his hand and hauled the bucket up. The wooden bucket, now full of water, was heavy. It seemed to have a will of its own, tugging him toward it, as if it wanted him to approach the other side.

He sensed that strange odor again. It grew more distinct as the bucket neared the wellhead.

His consciousness confirmed that it wasn't a signal transmitted through his sense of smell. It was some kind of synesthesia, with more unusual information trying to express itself through the pathway of smell.

He didn't need a reminder to recall where he had felt something like this before.

But... how was that possible?

He pulled hard on the rope and hauled the bucket out of the well. The clear water showed no sign of anything unusual. But his intuition—or some higher sense that had developed after he came into contact with Anomalous things—insisted there was something in it that shouldn't be there.

Kraft instinctively resisted the warning, but his consciousness kept working, matching the new information with the memories he had.

"Lucius, could you come over here?" He beckoned to him.

The middle-aged man had already left. There was no one else around, and Kraft needed to confirm a few things.

Lucius walked over to the bucket, keeping a subtle distance from Kraft, and glanced at the well water. "What's wrong? Is there really something wrong with the water?"

He was still shaken by the sudden incident.

"I'm not sure. I just thought of something else." Kraft paid no attention to his cautious movements and unwound the rope from his hand. "I need you to think back on something. It might be a little intrusive, but I have to ask."

"If I can remember it, there's nothing I can't tell you. In return, could I take a look at your sword when we get back?" Seeing the familiar Kraft again put Lucius somewhat at ease. Now he was curious about Kraft's sword. What man could resist the appeal of a weapon that looked good and worked well?

"Sure, as long as you don't cut your hand." It was an entirely understandable request. A fine sword was just too cool.

"What I wanted to ask is, how was Professor Calman's mental state in the few days before he left?"

"Huh? Why are you asking that all of a sudden?" Once again, Lucius felt he couldn't get along with people whose minds jumped around like this.

"Just tell me how he was. Was he very different from usual? Anything you can think of." Since Lucius didn't realize why Kraft was asking, that was all the better. Kraft needed an answer as objective as possible, uninfluenced by emotion.

He used as casual a tone as he could to make the conversation feel more relaxed, so Lucius would be more likely to recall things and say more.

Lucius rested a hand on his beak mask and thought for a moment. "He's never been better. He was even a little excitable."

"Did his personality seem any different? Especially in ways that didn't fit his usual image." Once suspicion took hold, everything started to seem wrong. That was exactly how Kraft felt now.

"If I had to say, I felt he was too impatient. He always wanted to get more experiments done as soon as possible."

"Did he spend most of his time in the lab, then?"

"I hadn't really noticed. Let me think... At least, the time my professor left the Academy every day didn't change much. It was always in the evening."

"He was in a hurry to finish more experiments at the Academy, but wouldn't stay a little longer?" Kraft had found the contradiction.

On its own, that could have been normal. But taking everything he knew into account, an idea he had never considered before surfaced.

The implication was so obvious that even Lucius caught on. "Are you saying the professor had something else to do outside? Weren't the samples..."

He abruptly cut himself off. He had spotted the major problem, too: there was indeed some Black Fluid whose use he knew nothing about.

Now Kraft's reason for asking that question became clear.

The scattered pieces of information were joined by a single thread, with a beginning and an end.

"This suspicion of yours makes no sense. Why would the professor do that?" Lucius immediately denied it, even though the idea fit perfectly with his initial theory about the Black Fluid.

Professor Calman had been his mentor for years, and the person who had guided him into medicine. He was practically a second father. Neither his personal feelings nor his respect for the professor's moral character would allow Lucius to accept the two being connected.

"So you think it's possible, too?" Kraft stared at Lucius through two layers of lenses. "Think it over carefully. Consider both the evidence that supports it and the evidence that doesn't."

Kraft himself had been frightened by the outlandish suspicion.

Although he had known Professor Calman only a short time, the professor's image in his mind was still a very positive one: a good man devoted to scholarship, hoping to advance medicine and save lives.

Even after learning that Calman had taken some of the samples away on his own, Kraft had never made that connection. At most, he had thought the professor wanted to keep some technical details secret.

The strict controls over the Black Fluid, with every use recorded, had given him the false impression that everything was under control. He would sooner believe it was a special epidemic disease unlike anything anyone had heard of. It had never occurred to him that the carefully refined procedures became meaningless the moment they failed to account for the portion the professor had taken away.

The idea that "the professor took the Black Fluid to poison people" was simply too absurd.

And yet here he was, standing before a water source that was almost certainly the culprit. Just minutes ago, he had suffered an attack that was both real and illusory.

That bizarre aura beyond his understanding was spreading around him. The more aware he became of its presence, the stronger it grew, becoming increasingly distinct.

He could sense it. But this time, it was no longer confined within a glass bottle.

It drifted freely through a vast space, dwelling in the deep well, dissolved in every bucket of water drawn from it, filling an area with no clear boundaries.

The affected area was so vast, like an invisible lake suspended overhead. Everyone who drank from the well was affected by it, sinking into its depths.

Kraft recalled his notes. The Black Fluid was indeed a medium. Falling asleep after drinking a diluted solution was probably only an outward manifestation.

Its true purpose was to let people come into contact with another layer of reality in the process.

Ordinary people couldn't accept or retain information that differed from what belonged to this world, so when they awoke, they had no memory of anything that had happened in their dreams.

But such a small amount of liquid couldn't have a prolonged and obvious effect on so many people at once unless another mechanism was involved—some kind of positive feedback that kept amplifying its influence.

Its range. The number of people affected.

A "domain" had appeared, much like the Black Stone Pillar, capable of affecting everyone nearby who met the conditions.

Once enough people in a certain area had drunk the water, the effects would intensify and the range would expand. The expanded range would then affect even more people, drawing more who had come into contact with it into its grasp and intensifying the effects further.

After affecting everyone nearby who had come into contact with it, this "domain" had now spread beyond Salt Tide District and reached into Blade's home on neighboring Elm Street.

Like an invisible, intangible lake, it submerged people without their noticing. All they knew was that they were sleeping longer and longer.

And that Evil Ghostly Thing, disguising itself with a soft exterior, swam through it like a fish, its intentions unknown to all.