Klein didn't hesitate for half a second. A rare look of severity flashed in his eyes as he slammed his palm down onto the crystal hub.
"Buzz—"
The mana supply was instantly severed! A violent surge of erratic mana sent a visible ripple through the air. The azure glow, like a beast being strangled, flickered twice in protest before dying out with a sharp, ear-piercing crack.
The room returned to its original dim, oppressive atmosphere. The air was thick with the acrid scent of burnt mana and a nauseatingly heavy stench of blood. In the silence, only heavy breathing and the rhythmic drip-drip of blood falling from the iron-backed chair to the floor remained.
"What a mess," Klein muttered under his breath, tossing the brass hammer back onto the workbench. The crisp metallic clang sounded particularly jarring in the dead silence.
He strode to the iron-backed chair, his long fingers moving with agile precision to undo the blood-soaked restraints in a few quick motions.
Without support, Karen collapsed like a puddle of mud, pitching forward. Klein was quick, grabbing the man's sticky, blood-stained collar and hoisting the heavy fellow upright, preventing a face-first fall that would have caused further injury.
"Hey, can you see me?" Klein waved two fingers in front of Karen's dazed eyes.
Karen's eyes were half-open, his pupils severely dilated and his whites shot through with terrifying blood vessels. His parched lips trembled violently, emitting fragmented, unintelligible sounds. His weak, blood-scented breath puffed fitfully against the back of Klein's hand.
Klein let out a long, slow breath, his tense shoulders finally relaxing.
As long as he wasn't dead. With his stash of refined-grade alchemical potions, even if the ferryman of the River Styx came knocking, he could still drag a person back from the brink.
He turned to look at the testing crystal pillar. With the mana array suppressed and Karen, the "medium," in a deep coma, the liquid inside had returned to its clear, transparent state. Those eerie shadows carrying the cold breath of the deep sea had vanished without a trace, as if that hair-raising riot had never happened.
Klein half-carried and half-dragged Karen onto a nearby wool rug. He pried open the man's jaws and efficiently administered two vials of potent recovery potions that glowed with a faint green light.
Having finished, he grabbed a clean piece of linen to wipe his hands and turned toward the desk. By the time he laid out a fresh sheet of parchment, the gravity on his face had faded, replaced by his usual unruffled calm.
Klein picked up his pen, dipped it deep into the dark ink, and set the tip to the rough paper, creating a rustling sound.
"Experimental Conclusion: Phase One Detachment, Failed."
He spoke to himself as he wrote, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the flavor of tonight's tea. He underlined the word "Failed" with a heavy stroke that nearly tore through the paper.
He had initially thought these filthy things from the deep sea were merely like leeches or some kind of parasite nesting in the human brain. He believed that using high-frequency mana oscillation in conjunction with his modified rejection array would be enough to force them out.
But as it turned out, he had oversimplified things. The situation was far more troublesome than anticipated.
Karen's conscious mind was indeed fighting back with everything it had; the man still possessed the unyielding spirit of a top-tier navigator. However, on a physical level, a part of him... had already been completely assimilated.
This was the fatal flaw. The underlying logic of the detachment array was absolute "rejection." When the array reached its limit, it operated without human emotion, ruthlessly identifying the assimilated portions of Karen's flesh as "foreign derivatives."
Consequently, the mana backlash from the array had acted directly upon Karen himself, attempting to erase his flesh and blood along with the monsters.
This perfectly explained the sudden, massive hemorrhaging. Karen had nearly been flayed alive by the very array meant to save him.
"Quite a thorny problem." Klein stopped writing and glanced at Karen, who lay unconscious on the resting couch, his face as pale as paper from the blood loss.
If he had been even half a beat slower in cutting the mana, Lyra's only hope of seeing her beloved fiancé again would have been if he, out of "atonement," resorted to scouring forbidden black magic manuscripts on "human transmutation" and "resurrection of the dead."
At that thought, Klein rubbed his brow helplessly, though the corner of his mouth quirked into a very slight arc.
Troublesome as it was, this ordeal hadn't been a waste of time. At the very least, he had eliminated one wrong option.
He reached out and pulled the parchment covered in dense data toward him, his gaze sharp as it scanned the fluctuating peaks.
Notably, the frequency of the shadows' activity within the crystal pillar perfectly coincided with the timing of Karen's hemorrhaging. This wasn't just a record of Karen's inhuman suffering; it was a true energy wave map of the deep-sea will's manifestation.
If his goal was merely passive defense or keeping Karen alive, it would be a simple matter for the current Klein—something he could resolve with a bit of time.
But as he looked at those mana lines representing the unknown and madness, a spark of an alchemist's near-greedy thirst for knowledge flickered deep within his eyes, which usually held only a gentle smile.
Simple expulsion? That would be a waste of good materials.
What Klein truly wanted to do was use Karen as the perfect "medium" to truly understand, analyze, and even deconstruct the underlying logic of this "deep-sea will." He wanted to see exactly what these monsters, capable of wreaking havoc on the west coast, really were!
Klein's fingertip lingered on the ink of the parchment. As he traced the rising and falling peaks, they began to look familiar.
This was no coincidence. Klein closed his eyes and searched through his vast memory bank. Within his mental reach, a small segment of that frequency had appeared in his research logs before.
The dragon in the dream.
The third dream Ophelia had brought to him.
"Raymond," Klein called out softly.
The heavy old wooden door was pushed open, and the steward, who had been waiting outside, stepped in. Dressed in a crisp tailcoat, his leather shoes clicked against the stone floor, precisely avoiding the bloodstains scattered about.
Raymond looked at Karen on the floor. His gaze lingered for two seconds on the deep gashes and mangled flesh, but his eyes—accustomed to life and death—remained unmoved. His tone was as stiff and formal as ever: "What are your orders, Master?"
Klein pointed to the unconscious Karen, his tone as light as if he were ordering someone to sweep up fallen leaves. "Take him down and clean him up. He has quite a few wounds. Use the healing agent from the second cabinet—both topical and oral. Be careful."
Raymond gave a slight bow, his movements meticulous and his clothes without a single wrinkle. He stepped forward, and without any wasted motion, his pure white high-level battle qi swirled out like physical ribbons. Karen was lifted into the air, supported by the steady, overbearing battle qi along with the blood-soaked rug beneath him.
The old steward turned and walked toward the door, the rhythm of his footsteps steady and his breathing unchanged.
In the first-floor hall.
Regular footsteps echoed from the stairs. Raymond came into view, carrying Karen with his battle qi.
Karen's clothes were in tatters, covered in terrifying gashes. Dried dark red blood mixed with fresh crimson dripped from the edges, making for a gruesome sight.
"Karen!"
Lyra, who had been waiting below, let out a shrill cry and rushed forward heedlessly.
She threw herself by Karen's side, her hands shaking so violently she was afraid to touch him for fear of hurting his gruesome wounds. Her eyes were red with panic, and large tears fell as the silver anchor pendant at her neck chimed softly against itself.
"He is still alive," Raymond said, coming to a halt. His voice was formal and devoid of emotion, yet it carried a reassuring certainty. "His injuries are severe but not difficult to manage. The Master will cure him."
Lyra messily wiped the tears and sweat from her face and nodded vigorously. She stepped aside to let him pass, following closely at Raymond's side, not daring to blink for fear that Karen might disappear.
Not far away, Ophelia stood silently.
Her golden eyes narrowed slightly as she inconspicuously scanned the wounds on Karen's body. Just a moment ago, when the array on the third floor had surged, her left hand—wrapped in cloth—had experienced a long-forgotten sting and throb. It was a resonance from the same source of deep-sea pollution.
But the proud Knightess merely gave a cold huff, her powerful willpower instantly crushing that vibration.
She stood up, her long, shapely legs taking a step forward as she looked up toward the closed door on the third floor. She knew the kind of dangerous deep-sea power Klein was facing, but after a moment's thought, she smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt and decided not to go up.
There was no need to disturb him.
In the room on the third floor, two sheets of parchment lay side by side on the wide oak desk.
On the left was the deep-sea mana waveform extracted from Karen; on the right was the pitch of the dragon's cry recorded from the dream.
Dark ink traced incredibly complex geometric lines on the rough paper, with peaks and valleys intertwining like a tangled ball of yarn.
Klein rubbed his brow hard to soothe his aching eyes, his gaze fixed on the small segment of frequency where the two sets of data overlapped.
Dragons and deep-sea monsters.
Conceptual manifestation.
In fact, when he had first heard that term from the Sage, Klein had already formed a hypothesis.
Clearly, once he found the complete correspondence between the two, the mystery of the deep-sea will would be fully unraveled.
However, trying to untangle this massive amount of chaotic information with just his eyes and a quill was a task comparable to numbering and cataloging every grain of sand on the beach at Silver Scale Harbor.
In his previous life, processing this level of data would have taken significant time even on a large machine.
"I really should make an alchemical computer," Klein grumbled softly, tossing his quill into the inkwell with a bit of frustration, sending up a small splash of black ink.
Sometimes Klein wished he could learn a cloning technique or something similar.
He could create seven or eight versions of himself, lined up at the desk, each handling a segment of data, comparing them day and night.
But as soon as that tempting thought appeared, he crushed it.
That stuff was incredibly sinister. Eventually, the line between the original and the clones would blur, and the various versions would fight for control of the body until his mind became a boiling pot of mush.
Klein would never take such a loss-making deal, turning himself into a schizophrenic just for a bit of convenience. Unless it was absolutely necessary, he would resolutely avoid the fringes of black magic. It simply wasn't worth it.
Since that was the case, he would have to build a computational matrix to assist with the calculations.
"Raymond," he called out toward the door.
The hallway was empty, offering only an echo in response.
He then remembered that the old steward had just taken Karen to the first floor to tend to those gruesome wounds.
Klein stood up and gave a deep stretch, his joints popping in a series of crisp snaps.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
He turned and walked to the row of solid wood bookshelves against the wall, his fingers trailing over rows of heavy, classic tomes before skillfully pulling out a copy of 《Introduction to Runic Array Deduction》.
Flipping through the yellowed pages, he searched for the necessary array foundations while mentally calculating how much mithril was left in his stores.
Constructing a high-intensity computational matrix would require a massive amount of mithril.
The surprise Karen had provided was too great—so great that he didn't even plan to leave himself any leisure time for sleep tonight.
He would set up the basic framework first, then dump the massive torrent of data into the array to let it run itself.
That was the proper, dignified way for an alchemist to work.
...
After an unknown amount of time, the mithril powder on the oak desk had nearly run out.
Klein was buried in his deductions, his quill scratching against the paper in a rapid, rustling rhythm. Outside, the sky had long since turned pitch black, and he hadn't even bothered to light a lamp. The half-finished array patterns on the desk emitted a faint blue glow, serving as a makeshift light source that cast flickering shadows across his face.
His stomach growled unhelpfully. He intended to finish the last two key nodes before worrying about dinner.
Just then, the door hinges creaked softly.
Ophelia walked in, carrying a silver tray.
She was dressed in her elegant long dress, her steps light. She walked to the desk and carefully placed a warm beef and potato stew and golden-brown toasted bread on an empty corner. The rich aroma of food instantly cut through the scent of ink in the room.
Then, she leaned over slightly to gather the discarded drafts scattered on the desk. They were close enough that Klein could catch a hint of her faint fragrance.
Neither spoke, as if sharing a wordless understanding. Ophelia's golden eyes surveyed the complex, dizzying array diagrams on the table. She didn't ask what they were, only pushed the tray a little closer to his hand.
"Eat while it's hot," she said, her voice cool but carrying an undetectable trace of softness.
She turned and walked toward the door, her back straight and poised. But before the door closed, she paused and added one more thing.
"Don't stay up too late."
As the door clicked shut, Klein set down his pen and took a bite of the bread.
The crust was crispy and the inside soft—toasted just right.
Rate on N.U.
