Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

The next day, after returning to the manor and making some preparations, the team decided to head into the forest under the leadership of lumberjack Sean to see where they found the date tree with a rotten center.

Most people neither understood nor cared about the reason for this order, and showed quite rare obedience and discipline. Even the commander Martin was only a knight. To some extent, this may be more rare than pure personal force.

War horses are indeed not suitable for entering the forest without roads, and have little practical value. Only a few pack horses are brought into the team to bear the weight of several pairs of armor and camping equipment. As well as the kerosene that Kraft asked to bring, the small cans were packed in mesh bags, padded with some straw to absorb shock, and hung on the side of the saddle.

Due to weight considerations, the amount carried was destined to not satisfy Kraft, but objective conditions did not allow him to carry more.

Martin didn’t think it was necessary to add more. This is the oil used to burn the gate of the fortress during the attack. The effect is so good that it makes people feel unsafe. However, he was still willing to follow the advice of professionals and bring some with him, just in case it was necessary to arrange a cremation for the mushroom-growing pagan.

Having said that, do medical school professors really use kerosene in their professional work?

With this little question in mind, Martin took a break at the lumber camp and followed the guide who brought only simple luggage deep into the forest.

According to Sean, the "quite far" he meant was about two or three days of hiking in the forest. Any further away would make it inconvenient to bring the wood back to the logging site. The upper reaches of the river in the forest are not deep enough, and there are many rocks and shoals, or branches of trees hanging down in the water block the road. It is impossible to float down the river like the section of the river down from the lumberyard, and can only be brought back by manpower.

When they are lucky, they will also bring back some specialties from the forest, such as small animals, berries, wild vegetables, etc., all hidden in the long green curtain, which is much richer than the outer forests that are often disturbed. It’s just that I seem to have been unlucky the last few times and my harvest has not been as good as in previous years.

It is not easy to move forward in this environment. It is often necessary to use a hand ax to open a path, cut off various familiar or unknown plants, and squeeze out a small amount of space for walking.

The infestation of insects and ants, as well as the leaves that are always wet, make the body feel damp and itchy all the time. Since the route roughly follows the river, no one knows what it will look like under the seemingly normal leaf litter. It may be flat land, or it may be a puddle that will sink the whole leg.

It is not easy to find a large enough open space to camp at night, and it requires a lot of time and energy to clean up, and irritability continues to brew. At this time, the kerosene carried provided help in starting a fire in the damp area.

These troubles, on the other hand, reassure those who know the target. No matter what they were tracking, it was impossible to move in such a forest without leaving traces. Even a ghost would have to leave two footprints.

After more than two days of tossing, Sean finally found the area where he came to log wood last time, using a split lightning log with a special image as a signpost.

Indeed, it was just a general area, and it was really impossible to find the tree stumps left last time based on memory.

Fortunately, the space here is a bit wider, and you can have a clearing in the forest to camp without having to clean it up, which is gratifying.

"I remember there seems to be a proverb: Look for a specific tree in the woods." Martin looked around the forest with sparse low vegetation, and it seemed that the sunlight falling above his head was abundant, and eight out of ten of it was no longer intercepted by the tree crown. Nine, "It means something impossible."

The thing they saw most these days was probably trees. Faced with this problem, Kraft also felt troubled, "I shouldn't expect that Sean to find the location accurately."

"Of course, this is not his fault. It would not be an easy task for anyone else. We can look for it in the near future. At least the vegetation here is not too dense."

"I really don't know when we will find it." Martin shook his head and walked away to check the progress of his followers' shoveling, and to supervise them not to heat and eat the game they picked up.

Along the way, they encountered some harvests such as berries and wild vegetables, as well as mushrooms, but they were scattered here and there, and they had never seen such obviously abnormal and vigorous growth.

And here, at the base of the tree at my feet, there is a finger-sized bush of the palm mushroom. The color doesn't look like it could knock people over, it's closer to the traditional image of edible fungi.

Because of this, Martin must keep an eye on the guys in charge of the campfire to avoid another incident where someone gives him a bunch of grilled white-bellied mushroom slices after not seeing him for a while. Whether for safety reasons or psychological rejection, he no longer wanted to associate mushrooms with food.

"I'll walk around, it won't be too far." Kraft walked to a place outside the camp where there were few people. He always felt that he was not in a good condition today. He couldn't breathe well when standing in a crowded place, and he felt like he was waiting in a long queue. Feel.

Empirically, staying away from the crowd at this time should improve the situation, so he refused Kupp's company and leaned alone under a tree that could be seen outside the camp, waving to indicate that he was staying here. No need to worry.

He pressed the back of his head against the tree trunk for a while. The fresh air of nature did not make him feel better. Instead, the left arm he had just waved seemed to have been strained too much. The soreness radiated around the hard object and swam among the muscles.

When the uneven alternation of hot and cold also emerged from his bone marrow, Kraft realized that this seemed to be something more than just something wrong.

The change in feeling was not obvious, like the slate warmed by the sun and the slightly cool metal before dawn, or the numbness and acupuncture that flickered like the snowflake screen of an old TV, using this as a port to input signals to him.

The sinking mind is like being soaked in a very light liquid brewed from gossip. Only when you feel it carefully can you discover its existence.

Kraft left the trunk and took a few steps back toward the tree, the sense of strangeness becoming less hallucinatory.

Continuing to pull away, the feeling did not subside and returned to its original level. It seemed that it was just a small fluctuation of inaccurate perception.

He simply walked around the camp, and the abnormal and sticky feeling of moisture undulated, like ripples on a swimming pool, and he kept flopping in this pool that he couldn't touch the edge.

"Koop, come here." Kraft waved to the idle retinue, "Are you feeling uncomfortable? Dizziness, drowsiness, something like that."

"Uh... I think it might be a little bit like having water in my ears, but it's not a problem at all. Do you have any instructions?" The servant shook his head, trying to shake out the non-existent water.

"Borrow me an axe."

"Wait a minute." Coop ran back to the camp, quickly borrowed the ax from Sean, and handed it to Craft.

The latter raised his arm and chopped down the nearest tree trunk with all his strength. The two ax marks sank into the trunk and met at the heart of the tree, cutting off a wedge-shaped piece of wood.

But Kraft had no intention of cutting down this tree. After prying out the wood pieces, he immediately switched to another tree and repeated the process more than ten times, circling the camp and returning to the center of the camp with a large handful of waste wood pieces.

"We don't have to go to the trouble of finding the tree we cut down last time."

"You mean...?" Picking up a piece, Martin saw the light-colored patches that had loosened the wood and erased the growth rings.

"It's everywhere here."