"What on earth is this?" asked the priest.
There was a kind of flame called confusion and curiosity in his eyes, which ignited from the gloomy mood, like sparks meeting grease, and instantly filled the entire pupil.
Some urgent thought drove him to seek information in order to stitch together the torn corner of his cognition.
The separation between the worldview and what we see seems to have become a real wound, a dull pain in my mind, which is worse than the discomfort in my body.
"It's a long story." Under Green's gaze, Kraft finally had the nerve to put the things in his pocket, "But it's a long story."
"To explain it crudely, you can think of it as an 'artificial' animal, well, in various senses."
"Everything in the world, animals, plants, and people, are the creation of the Lord." According to the Holy Scriptures, Heavenly Father indeed enjoys the patent rights of all living things, especially human beings, who belong to the unquestionable highest level among all creations.
Everything else serves this highest level of creation. Human beings are the meaning of the world and are beings who are born with the right to enjoy the rest of creation.
"No offense, then these are the extra materials when making humans. They changed the assembly method and became what you see now." The professor had no intention of doubting this. In his opinion, reviewing the holy scriptures is just an instinctive self. Protective responses, stabilizing ways of perceiving the world.
"Of course, you can't say it's a human being. It's like demolishing a few houses and using materials to build a church on the original foundation. You can't say the church is the original house."
It must be explained in a more popular way, even if it loses some accuracy, it cannot accurately convey the weirdness of reconstructing tissues and organs into alien shapes.
At least as someone who had never had a background in biology, Green understood the general concept and asked: "So the purpose is to find more 'building materials' and then expand?"
"From a behavioral logic, it's almost like this. What you encounter should be a 'young version', close to the larvae and pupae of insects."
"What happens after maturity?"
"That's something else entirely. It has limbs, lots of limbs, like some sea creatures. Have you ever seen an octopus? Yes? It's like that, but much bigger and a little more difficult to deal with. New features.”
"Actually, I'm quite lucky. I can't imagine what I would do if something big enough to block the waterway and move quickly appears. There is no room to escape, and maybe everything will be over before I react."
Kraft placed the prism on the coffin board. The stone was still in some incomprehensible state of activation, and a circle of pale light and shadow faintly appeared around it.
"As for this stone, you can roughly understand it as its core, which is equivalent to the brain, heart, etc. It is easier to identify. After all, it is unlikely to find a second stone with similar texture and shimmer."
The priest nodded in understanding, trying to digest the information he received. It is still too difficult for people to accept the existence of an animal that is assembled from its own kind and whose core is a stone.
He tried touching the stone, as if the eerie feeling that had not been exposed to sunlight for thousands of years rubbed against the fingerprints. The cold light penetrated the memory and connected with something.
"Is the light of all these things so weak?"
"Yes." Kraft replied without thinking. In his impression, both the prisms removed from the body of the crawling creature and the source of these stones - the celestial body - remained dark. It exudes an almost non-existent shimmer.
A chill suddenly ran through his body along his arms. Green shuddered and suddenly had an unpleasant thought: "What if I told you that I saw this kind of light coming out from under that well? ”
This question was put directly to the professor and he was silent. When Kraft realized that the other party was not asking casually, an extremely unpleasant feeling also swept over him.
"Did anything else happen?"
"The cracks, the same cracks as before, appeared out of thin air. It was as if a sword, a very long and invisible sword, was splitting the stone."
It sounds very similar. The same experience happened not long ago on the other side, but the scale was scaled many times. It was small enough that the pagans could use it as a deadly ambush.
"Well, Father Green, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, as you might imagine, there might be something big down there."
"What's the good news?" "This phenomenon is understandable and even controllable to a certain extent. For example, the paganism we are dealing with can reproduce it on a small scale." And this recurrence may not be the first in history. first.
“You understand the good news differently than most people do.”
"Believe me, this is definitely good news. Someone has done preliminary research for us and proved that there is a way to go. Is there anything better?" Kraft took out a piece of cotton cloth, wrapped the prism and handed it to Green, " Let’s keep this with you for now, and now go and see what I found.”
The things brought to Green were given the best possible care and stored in a separate tomb in the upper tomb, under special guard.
With last night's experience foreshadowing, when he opened the tightly tied package, the priest just showed an expression of disgust.
In this corpse that can no longer be defined as a human being, we can intuitively see how Heavenly Father’s most perfect creation has been gradually distorted and developed in a completely unfamiliar direction.
The stone embedded in the palm of the right hand confirms the belief that pagans master unnatural means.
"I have to say, Professor Kraft, at least in terms of combat, I quite admire you. If you were born in the church, you would become the sharpest sword of Heavenly Father in the world."
"Come on, then let's go to the streets together every day to catch fake infidels who defraud the middle-aged and old people out of their money?" Kraft doesn't feel any sense of accomplishment in dealing with a relatively conventional enemy. When the opponent's tricks can be sensed, Failure is inevitable.
"Look at this."
Holding the Pagan's right hand and turning it over, Kraft showed Green the hollow on the back of the hand. A corresponding object should have been embedded here, corresponding to the gray-white stone in the palm.
"There was another stone like that?"
"I thought so at first." He rolled up the sleeve of the corpse. The black veins on the too pale arm were more prominent than last night, swollen and deformed, like nematodes parasitic under the skin. "Guess what's inside?"
"Blood clot?" Although he said that, Green didn't think it was possible. Veins with dried up blood should be shriveled and nothing.
Kraft followed an already opened hole and cut a small section of the vein, revealing a black substance inside that almost burst the blood vessel wall. It was in the shape of small ice crystals and solidified in the blood vessel. It seemed to be something rocky and mineral in nature.
"It was not like this yesterday. Some of it is still liquid and can flow out of the blood vessels."
"What do you mean?"
"This is what was originally embedded in the back of the hand. It melted under certain conditions and flowed back along the veins. When it was liquid, you had paid attention to it before."
Green looked blankly at these things solidified in his blood vessels, and he couldn't remember when he had anything to do with them.
"Think about it, if this gray-white stone will lead to endless acquisition and growth, then you need a strong, inhibitory thing to balance it." When seeing the black solid-liquid mixture, Kraft said Recognized some of them.
"When it is a liquid, take a drop and dilute it into water, and you will get something that is colorless and odorless, with a very low concentration but enough to temporarily inhibit consciousness and life activities."
【Perhaps we can call it clarity】
"Let's discuss it. I want to keep this arm for a few days. I want to study and understand the conditions under which it will melt. Let's just say that the right hand has been chopped off and cannot be found. You can take the rest back to scare the bishop, chief judge, etc. Don't expect it. There is a second person who can help with this.”
"Okay." Green agreed to the request. As long as he has something that is enough to scare people, it doesn't matter whether the thing is missing an arm or not.
"Speaking of which, what are you going to do with that armor? Even if no one notices the mark, its existence cannot be hidden."
"It's okay. It's an emergency. It's normal for the breastplate pattern to come off during transportation, right?"