novelraw Chapter 148: The First Lesson of a Drafter
Chapter 148: The First Lesson of a Drafter
The night talk at the Hofbräuhaus, mingled with the bitter taste of beer and the clash of ideas, was a tempering.
It forged the Iron Triangle, having endured the test of humanity's evil in Oberammergau, into a resilient unit with a sharp, defined edge.
They each emerged from their spiritual crises and coalesced anew with a united front.
Early the next morning, they arrived at a manor on the outskirts of Munich.
This manor was heavily guarded, disguised as the "Bavarian Royal Association of Clocks and Precision Instruments," but was in fact I.A.R.C.'s crucial Class A safe house and main liaison station in Southern Germany.
They needed to report the events of the "Limb Collector" mission here.
They also needed to seal and transfer the physical evidence brought out from Oberammergau.
This evidence included the purified remains of the "corpse puppets" and the secret history of the town documenting the "Devil's Contract."
They were received by Klaus, the head of the Munich liaison station.
He was an old-school Prussian gentleman, even more rigid and stern than Professor Schmidt.He listened to Julian's meticulous report and William's concise, bloody combat supplement, grasping the full picture of the incident.
A look of shock and respect surfaced on the stern face of this famously impassive German station head.
The Munich liaison station conducted a preliminary assessment and report.
The Supreme Council in faraway Geneva efficiently provided the mission's final rating and rewards within a few hours.
The mission was rated as Town-class, with an excellent completion assessment.
The reason given was that the action team successfully eliminated a long-entrenched Town-class UMA that posed a threat to regional security.
More importantly, they prevented potential social unrest and collective madness that could have erupted from the breaking of the contract, at a relatively small cost.
Their handling of the situation demonstrated foresight and superb tactical wisdom.
Accompanying the high evaluation were generous rewards.
The team shared nine hundred Association points and six hundred pounds in cash.
Lin Jie received a credential card recording the latest points and rankings from Mr. Klaus.
He saw his position on this quarter's "Rookie Hunter Observation Roster" had skyrocketed.
After these several missions, he had leapt from his previous mid-tier position into the top thirty of the list.
After completing the official procedures, the team returned to their hotel in central Munich to rest.
William needed time to heal his body with the medicine provided by the Association.
Julian headed to the Bavarian State Library, renowned for its rich collection of medieval manuscripts, hoping to repair his shaken cognition through knowledge.
And Lin Jie gained undisturbed time for decoding.
He shut himself in the hotel suite.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows lay Munich's old town with its Baroque-style red roofs and church bell towers.
But Lin Jie had no mind to appreciate the view.
His entire being was immersed in the heavy, waterproof leather suitcase belonging to Professor Schmidt, secured with three brass locks, that lay before him.
This case contained not just old diaries and manuscripts.
It held the secret of a soul's birth, the root of a genius hunter's glory and tragedy, and the key to unraveling the confusion in his own heart.
He carefully pried open the rusted clasps with a small knife.
Inside the case were no Grotesque Armaments or UMA materials, only diaries and sketchbooks of various sizes.
These books, bound with different types of paper, were neatly bundled together.
From the slightly childish yet already sharp pencil signature "Karl von Stein" on the sketchbook covers, it was clear these were the private relics left behind by the Cartographer Karl during his youth and young adulthood.
With a solemn heart, Lin Jie took out the topmost sketchbook, its cover wrapped in coarse linen.
He nervously opened the first page.
A sunny, imaginative young Karl, whom Lin Jie had never known, leapt from the page.
He transported Lin Jie back to the 1860s, a time not yet tainted by darkness.
The first half of the diaries and sketchbooks was like a film of Bavarian pastoral poetry, showing Lin Jie a sensitive, curious, and gifted boy growing up in the town of Oberammergau.
He saw how the young Karl displayed a talent for nature and drawing from an early age.
The Alps he drew were majestic and sacred, the birds he painted seemed about to take flight the next second, and the stag he depicted had eyes full of a king's pride and wariness.
The figure that appeared most frequently in this gifted boy's sketchbooks was a little girl a few years his junior.
She wore a flaxen-colored long braid, her face always carrying a timid yet adoring smile for her older brother.
Lina von Stein.
Karl's younger sister, who died young, and the person he cherished most in his life.
In his diary, Karl described the deep bond between him and this little shadow with doting, gentle strokes.
He wrote about how they caught salamanders in the stream on summer afternoons.
And how they sat around the fireplace on winter nights, listening to their grandmother tell ancient tales of Krampus and forest witches.
Lina was the sole audience for his painted world, and he was the sole guardian deity in Lina's childhood world.
This peaceful, beautiful daily life stopped on a certain diary page.
It was the spring of 1867.
In his diary, Karl recorded with a frenzied mix of excitement and disbelief a strange encounter he and his sister had while sketching in the Black Forest.
"Right at the edge of that forbidden zone locals call the Fairy Marsh, perpetually shrouded in mist, Lina and I saw a creature we had never seen in any natural history illustration!"
"It had rabbit ears, a squirrel's tail, pheasant wings, and teeth as sharp as a wild boar's tusks! It was trying to steal an acorn cup filled with dew!"
"It is the most illogical yet perfect creation I have ever seen, like the legendary 'Wolpertinger'! I drew its likeness in my sketchbook as fast as I could, and Lina saw it too! She swore it was the strangest animal she'd ever seen!"
Beside this excited text, Karl had reproduced the UMA's appearance with precise strokes.
Lin Jie could be certain this was the complete version of the graffiti he had seen earlier in Karl's ancestral home.
This record also revealed a secret to Lin Jie.
The Cartographer Karl's talent was not limited to drawing;
he likely possessed an innate affinity and perception for mystical creatures, much like old Arthur's daughter, Lily.
He could see things ordinary people couldn't.
This gift gave him artistic inspiration, but it also sowed the seeds for his tragic life.
Because immediately following the excited, curious diary entries, the tone of the sketchbook underwent a cliff-like, drastic change.
Those pages appeared wrinkled, having been soaked with tears.
The handwriting on them was distorted almost beyond recognition by the writer's immense grief and remorse.
Lin Jie sought Julian's help, using the completion function of "The Scribe's Papyrus" to decipher the truth that Karl had sealed away and that had torn his soul apart.
After that encounter, the young Karl became obsessed with the mysterious "Wolpertinger."
Disregarding his parents' warnings, on a rainy afternoon, he secretly took his equally curious sister, Lina, deep into the heart of that Black Forest area the townsfolk considered forbidden.
He naively believed he would see that adorable creature again.
But this time, what they encountered was no longer a gentle, non-aggressive sprite.
It was an invasive UMA.
Karl referred to it in his diary as the "Swamp Tree Fiend."
It was a swamp creature somewhere between plant and animal.
It had limbs tangled like rotten tree roots and a maw covered in suckers that could split open a hundred and eighty degrees.
It was adept at disguising itself as deadwood floating on the swamp, waiting for prey.
In that encounter, the young Karl and his unarmed sister had no means of resistance.
The Swamp Tree Fiend burst from the mire, its slimy tentacles wrapping around Lina's ankle.
Karl attacked the monster frantically with his drawing board and rocks.
But to the thick-skinned UMA, it was merely a tickle.
"Brother, run!"
That was the last sound she left in this world.
And in that brief gap bought with his sister's life.
Karl ran.
He didn't look back, didn't dare listen to the screams of his sister being dragged into the swamp behind him.
He just ran instinctively towards the light outside the forest.
Just as Karl's spirit broke and he was about to be dragged into the abyss of death by the pursuing UMA.
A holy, silvery-white flame descended from the sky.
A senior I.A.R.C. hunter, who happened to be hunting in Germany, arrived just in time.
Karl described how he used a glowing battle-axe to cleave that Swamp Tree Fiend in half with just three moves.
That unnamed mentor became the first person to guide Karl into the inner world.
He rescued Karl from the forest and, for a period afterward, kept him by his side, teaching him about the cruel other side of this world.
Before parting ways with Karl, he said something to the future Cartographer.
These words were recorded by Karl in both German and Latin on the title pages of all his diaries, becoming his lifelong motto.
"Remember, child, your gift is a blessing bestowed by the gods, and also a curse set by devils to tempt you. It will allow you to see the wondrous miracles of this world, and equally, it will let you glimpse abysses deep enough to corrupt the soul."
"To survive on this lonely, thorny path and protect those around you, you must learn to use your reason to rein in your emotions. You must learn to ruthlessly separate the artworks you see from those lethal threats that only need to be purified with bullets and fire."
"This, is our first lesson as hunters."
In the latter half of the diary, Lin Jie saw an adult Karl who had officially become an I.A.R.C. Investigator.
He returned to Oberammergau wanting to use the knowledge and power he had gained to investigate the truth behind the "Swamp Tree Fiend" encounter years ago.
He too had discovered the strangeness hidden beneath the town's surface.
He had already narrowed his suspicions to the older, more cunning Limb Collector UMA, which was better at exploiting human disguise.
He suspected the "Swamp Tree Fiend" was likely attracted by the spiritual energy field emitted by the Limb Collector.
That fragment of information on the Limb Collector that Lin Jie found was precisely the core intelligence material Karl had applied for from headquarters for this operation.
But just as his investigation was about to touch the core secret.
His investigation was forced to halt due to an unrefusable reason.
On the last few pages of the diary, Karl hastily scribbled:
"Received an S-class, highest-priority mission directive from Geneva Headquarters. Intelligence has discovered dangerous signs of cooperation between the Eternal Serpent cult and a mysterious local organization in the Far East region of Asia called the Black Lotus. Their goals both seem related to a forbidden project codenamed 'Living Holy Embryos'..."
"I must depart immediately. The debt of Oberammergau will have to be recorded for now..."