novelraw Chapter 153: Hunters and Guardians
Chapter 153: Hunters and Guardians
The sound itself wasn't loud, but in the deathly silent valley where even the wind had ceased, it seemed exceptionally abrupt.
This sound was amplified in everyone's perception, becoming an ominous alarm bell.
This wasn't natural weathering or exfoliation;
it was disturbance caused by the movement of some creature.
It was a warning, a provocation, and a declaration.
The master of this hunting ground had already detected the presence of intruders.
"Prepare for enemy contact!"
Klaus reacted with lightning speed.
He didn't look up to locate the source of the sound;
his combat instincts had already made him issue the most concise and correct order.
His voice held no grief or shock, only icy fighting spirit.
William's actions were even faster than his command.The moment the sound rang out, this veteran soldier had already agilely moved away from Lin Jie's side.
He dropped to one knee, the lever-action rifle in his hands completing its loading with a crisp mechanical sound, its muzzle steadily aimed towards the direction of the ridge.
His entire aura shifted in an instant from a reliable guardian to that of an efficient, lethal killing machine.
Gretchen quickly stowed away her precise detection instruments.
She drew a silver Mauser M1879 pistol from the holster on her leg and, with an agility that didn't match her scholarly identity, darted behind a massive rock for cover.
Her eyes held no panic, only calm tactical assessment.
Julian immediately shielded the half-kneeling Lin Jie behind him.
Though not a professional combatant, he gripped the Withered Thorns tightly, ready at any moment to release the attack-weakening attenuation field.
The entire team, this group temporarily assembled from different branches and backgrounds, displayed astonishing coordination and professionalism in the face of threat.
Lin Jie took a deep breath of the frigid air, forcibly suppressing the mental backlash brought by Reverberation Touch.
Leaning on Julian's shoulder, he slowly stood up and directed his gaze towards the mist-shrouded ridge.
What he saw wasn't the UMA of unknown form he had anticipated.
At the edge of the gray-white mist, three blurry human figures stood silently.
They blended into the mountain rock;
had it not been for the rolling stone sound that exposed their presence, the naked eye couldn't distinguish them from the surrounding stone.
They were not UMAs.
But the primal, desolate, and hostile aura emanating from them made Lin Jie's heart palpitate more than any UMA ever had.
"Listen, people over there!"
An aged yet resonant voice, mingled with the valley's echo, drifted down from atop the ridge.
The voice spoke in English with a thick Bavarian accent, "This is the resting place of the sacred mountain 'Wotan's Heart'. It does not welcome outsiders bearing steel and fire. Turn back immediately, or the mountain's wrath will reduce you all to dust."
This mythically colored and warning-laden speech took everyone by surprise, except for Klaus.
"Who are they?" Julian whispered, his academic radar already buzzing.
"Wotan's Heart? That's the primal name for this mountain range in ancient Germanic mythology;
modern maps have no such annotation. Who are they?"
Klaus didn't answer immediately.
He simply straightened up slowly, holstered his weapon, but his muscles remained taut, ready to respond to any sudden situation.
He raised his head and responded towards the ridge in an equally resonant voice, "We are from the International Anomaly Research and Containment. We are not here to desecrate;
we are investigating a major anomalous event."
"According to the Berlin Secret Pact signed between the Association and the German Empire in 1811, we have the right to intervene in threats rated A or above within imperial territory."
He invoked the highest agreement between the Association and secular authorities, attempting to resolve this standoff through legal principle.
However, the mysterious figures on the ridge seemed to scoff at this "secret pact".
"The empires of mortals are but castles on the sand, washed away by the tide," the aged voice carried a note of mockery.
"Our covenant with this mountain is older than any of your empires. We are the 'Root Guardians'. This land does not permit trespass by you self-proclaimed disruptors of order."
"Root Guardians"!
When this name was uttered by the old man's mouth, Klaus's expression turned grave.
He turned his head and quickly explained to the team members behind him, "Trouble. They are one of the oldest and most exclusive inner world organizations in the region from the Black Forest to the Alpine mountains. A group of extreme naturalists who adhere to primitive Druidic teachings."
Julian's eyes instantly lit up, and he whispered excitedly, "A genuine Druidic branch? My God, academia generally believes they vanished during the Roman Empire era! This is a living historical fossil!"
"Now is not the time for excitement, scholar," Klaus's tone was stern.
"The ideology of the Root Guardians is completely opposed to the Association's. They believe everything in the inner world, whether gentle spirits or brutal UMAs, is part of nature and should follow its most primal laws of evolution, life, and death."
"They oppose any form of human intervention, whether hunting or containment."
"In their eyes, we of the I.A.R.C. are fundamentally no different from cults like the Eternal Serpent—both forcibly distorting nature's balance with our own will."
Lin Jie immediately understood the dilemma before them.
This wasn't a simple black-and-white confrontation.
It was a fundamental clash between two different ideologies regarding the very definition of "order".
From the I.A.R.C.'s perspective, UMAs are anomalies that must be managed and controlled to protect the order of the human world.
From the Root Guardians' perspective, humanity itself is the greatest anomaly, and the I.A.R.C.'s so-called order is merely a human-centric, arrogant tyranny.
"I say this for the last time!" The aged voice from the ridge rang out again, this time laced with killing intent.
"Take your steel and leave this place! The balance within the mountain must not be broken, and the petrification worm's slumber ritual must not be disturbed!"
As he spoke, the three blurry figures finally stepped out from the mist, revealing their true appearances.
The leader was an old man with white hair and beard, his face etched with deep wrinkles, but his eyes were as sharp as a hawk's.
He wore a moss-green cloak woven from unknown plant fibers and animal pelts, leaning on a staff made of ancient oak, its tip embedded with a large, unpolished piece of amber.
Standing behind him were two burly middle-aged men.
Their faces were painted with camouflage mimicking wood grain, their eyes holding a beast-like vigilance and hostility.
The weapons in their hands weren't firearms or Grotesque Armaments, but massive battle-axes and ancient ice axes made of obsidian, shimmering with runic light.
No trace of the Industrial Revolution could be felt from them, only a savage, primal power originating from the forest, mountains, and ancient beliefs.
Klaus and the leading old man locked eyes from a distance.
The two leaders representing "modern order" and "primordial covenant" respectively, neither yielded in this silent clash of gazes.
"And if we don't leave?" Klaus's voice turned cold.
Abandoning the mission, letting the souls of his two subordinates be forever imprisoned in this cold rock—that was absolutely not an option for him.
"Then you shall return to this earth you seek to taint, as its fertilizer," the old man slowly raised his oak staff.
The atmosphere in the air tightened;
a bloody conflict seemed inevitable.
It was at this moment that Lin Jie suddenly spoke up.
"Please wait!" He stepped forward and spoke loudly.
"We might be able to avoid unnecessary combat. Your goal is to protect the balance, and our goal is to retrieve those petrified souls. There may not be a fundamental conflict between these two objectives."
The old man's gaze turned to Lin Jie, his hawk-like eyes carrying an appraising quality.
"A young man from the East, come to teach me about the balance of the Alpine mountains?"
"I dare not teach;
I merely wish to state a fact," Lin Jie met the other's gaze without arrogance or servility.
"The petrification worm you speak of, its dietary habits have changed in the last month. It is no longer content merely with slumber;
it has begun actively and frequently attacking humans."
"This in itself is an imbalance. We came here precisely to investigate the cause behind this imbalance. Perhaps our enemy and yours are one and the same."
Lin Jie's words were like a stone thrown into the stalemate of the standoff.
He cleverly avoided the ideological conflict, pulling the issue back to the factual level of the anomaly.
The old man's expression shifted slightly.
Clearly, he too had noticed the UMA's recent anomalous activity.
Yet, he ultimately shook his head, his aged face revealing a fatalistic pity.
"You don't understand. You people who live in the present will never understand."
He said gravely, "The petrification worm is not hunting;
it is molting. Every few decades, when its power accumulates to its limit, it needs to absorb enough life essence to complete a painful metamorphosis, then sink into an even longer slumber."
"This is the ancient covenant it has held with this mountain since the Ice Age. Your arrival, the unsettling aura you carry, will only stimulate it, awakening a deeper hunger within it."
The old man slowly raised his staff, pointing at the ground beneath everyone's feet, composed of rubble and ice.
"The ritual has already begun."
His words fell like a magical incantation.
The moment his last syllable faded, the entire valley floor began to emit a low groan.
The ground began to tremble faintly, its frequency steadily increasing.