novelraw Chapter 176: Project Child of the Forest
Chapter 176: Project Child of the Forest
Unlike William, who chose to return to pastoral life and heal his wounds with simple family warmth, Julian's recuperation was conducted in a manner that was both intense and fitting for his identity as Curator.
He plunged headfirst into another vast and perilous battlefield: the ocean of knowledge.
For this French scholar who regarded the pursuit of truth as his lifelong faith, the allure of the Underground City was nothing else.
The attraction of that I.A.R.C. London Branch hidden beneath the British Museum was not the Grotesque Armaments gleaming with alchemical light in the Equipment Department.
Nor was it the hunter legends full of hormones and bragging in the "Old Captain" bar.
It was the Association's secret archives, hailed as the knowledge core of the Underground City.
This archive was fundamentally different from the British Museum library open to the public above ground.
There were no polite librarians here, nor comfortable, brightly lit reading rooms, only rows of towering metal bookshelves reaching to the ceiling.
What was collected here were all the shattered remnants of truth that I.A.R.C. had dredged from the darkness of the inner world with blood and life.
Behind each archive volume made of special fireproof materials might lie a destroyed ancient civilization, a contained Calamity-class UMA, or a hunter team completely wiped out on the path of seeking truth.Julian offered himself up to this temple constructed from countless taboos with the posture of a pilgrim.
He neither slept nor rested, forgetting to eat and drink.
His world shrank to the deepest part of the archive, that tiny independent research room only Master-level scholars had permission to enter.
That massive oak desk buried under countless ancient documents and archive volumes exuding a musty odor was his sole position in this new war.
His goal was also singular.
He wanted to dredge up the secret hidden behind the bullet casing from the Association's founding era from this vast, ocean-like sea of information filled with lies and erasures.
He first took the bullet casing to the Equipment Department's Fourth Laboratory, requesting Arthur to conduct a precise analysis of its material composition.
Arthur's eyes, upon seeing that antique, rarely showed a flicker of reverence.
Using professional instruments, he spent several hours analyzing the bullet casing's brass alloy ratio, primer residue, and the long-dried spiritual traces upon it.
The conclusion Arthur reached scientifically confirmed the previous guesses of William and Julian.
"Incredible... This bullet's brass alloy actually contains trace amounts of a rare metal called 'Heart of the Mountain'!"
"This metal has long been proven in Grotesque Armament forging techniques to possess excellent stability and spiritual conductivity! But its refining technology... was lost after 1850!"
"Moreover, in its primer residue, I detected an alchemical compound based on 'pure silver' and 'sanctified oak ash'!"
"This formula... My God, this is practically the 'founding ancestor' of all modern 'exorcism holy bullets'!"
Arthur's material identification report provided Julian with two crucial and precise keywords for his subsequent document retrieval work.
"Heart of the Mountain" and "sanctified oak ash."
Armed with these two keywords, Julian plunged back into the archives.
This time, his search became a targeted, logically rigorous exercise in reverse archaeology.
He bypassed all the regular official archives classified by era and event, focusing all his attention on the most inconspicuous piles of old papers.
These materials were categorized as "obsolete technology," "failed alchemical experiments," and "heretical doctrines banned for violating the Association's core principles."
He firmly believed that the only way to find a ghost deliberately erased from official history was to explore those same garbage dumps forgotten by official history, searching for the traces he left behind.
This process was tedious and prolonged, accompanied by countless failures and frustrations. Julian transformed himself into a tireless human search engine.
He leafed through thousands of yellowed, curled parchment manuscripts. He deciphered tens of thousands of experimental records written in various lost ancient alchemical symbols.
Finally.
In the second week of his recuperation period, on a deep night shrouded in fog like the end of the world.
Within a fragmented manuscript carelessly stuffed at the very bottom of a certain archive shelf, lacking even a catalog number.
This manuscript recorded "Abandoned Proposals from the Association's Weapons Development Department, 1840s."
He found a name that made the blood in his entire body freeze.
"Project Child of the Forest."
It was a name that sounded romantic and philosophical. The core proposal of this plan made Julian feel a shock stemming from the overturning of his worldview.
This proposal, drafted by a mysterious proposer who left only the codename "Oak Sage" in the archives, had a core philosophy that was actually the fusion of two mystical theories.
It attempted to merge the mystical philosophy of the ancient Druidic faction, which revered natural balance and could achieve Spiritual Resonance with mountains, forests, and UMAs themselves.
With I.A.R.C.'s interventionist philosophy centered on hunting and containment.
"...We must recognize that not all anomalies are hostile to humanity."
Julian read the words on the manuscript in a trembling voice.
"The forest has the forest's laws, the mountains have the mountains' breath. We, I.A.R.C., should not exist merely as guardians of the human world. We should become the most crucial bridge between the surface and inner worlds."
"What we need are not just hunters who can kill UMAs. We need 'Shepherds' who can listen to the voices of UMAs even more."
"Shepherds..."
Julian unconsciously repeated this word laden with religious and philosophical meaning.
This was remarkably similar to the new consensus their Iron Triangle had reached after reconciling with the Root Guardians in Germany.
Could such an advanced spark of thought have existed within the Association half a century ago? However, just as Julian was about to stand and applaud this forward-thinking "Oak Sage"...
A hoarse, elderly female voice sounded from the shadows behind him, shattering the silence that belonged to him alone.
"But do you know how the 'Shepherds' he spoke of were cultivated? Young Mr. Belloc."
Julian was so startled by this sudden voice that he jumped up from his chair.
He whirled around to see an elderly woman with gray hair, wearing a traditional Victorian-era black gown, her figure stooped. She had appeared soundlessly behind him at some unknown time.
In her hands, she held a stack of archive volumes taller than herself. It was the sole "ghost" of this archive, the "Gray Lady" who seemed to know all secrets.
"Madam..." Julian instinctively stood up and bowed to this mysterious presence.
The Gray Lady paid no heed to his courtesy.
Her eyes merely fell coldly upon the idealistic manuscript in Julian's hands.
Then she slowly revealed the dark reality hidden beneath that beautiful blueprint.
"The core of Project Child of the Forest was not merely an innovation in philosophy."
"It also contained an extremely dangerous, one might say blasphemous, human experiment."
"The 'Oak Sage' firmly believed that the talent to listen to the voices of all things truly existed. But it only existed in those pure children whose minds had not yet been tainted by civilization."
"So his plan was to secretly screen children across Europe who possessed the highest talent for 'spiritual affinity.'"
"Then, from a young age, take them away from human society and place them in a 'nursery zone' controlled by the Association, deep within the Black Forest. Let them grow up alongside those screened UMAs."
Julian's face turned deathly pale.
"He attempted, in the most extreme artificial way, to mass-produce a batch of so-called 'new humans' who could truly understand the Dao of nature and become a bridge between the two worlds."
The Gray Lady's words struck Julian's heart heavily.
"A mad plan that, for the sake of a lofty ideal, did not hesitate to use humans themselves as experimental material."
"That is the truth of his 'Shepherd' project."
Having said this, the Gray Lady no longer looked at him. Holding that heavy stack of archive volumes, she disappeared once more into the darkness formed by countless bookshelves.
Leaving only Julian standing there dumbfounded. No wonder this plan was denounced as "heretical."
Carrying this heavy feeling, he turned his gaze back to the appendix of the manuscript.
Julian also saw the design blueprints for the "Guardian" general-purpose rifle, using Heart of the Mountain alloy for the barrel and sanctified oak ash as the alchemical core.
All the clues connected at this moment.
The mysterious Mentor who saved Karl must have been one of the core members of that Druidic faction, which had long since vanished into the river of history.
And the bullet he used was the sole product of Project Child of the Forest.
When Julian continued flipping through, he saw that on the last page of this proposal manuscript, a huge cross had been viciously drawn in red ink.
Beside that cross was a line of cautionary annotations written by multiple people.
"Rejected."
"The core philosophy of this proposal seriously violates the Association's basic charter of 'taking human interests as the supreme principle.'"
"Its appeasing attitude towards UMAs could potentially bring unpredictable consequences to the human world."
"The proposer, 'Oak Sage,' due to his overly dangerous and inflammatory ideology, is hereby relieved of all duties in the Weapons Development Department effective immediately. His related research is to be sealed."
Julian finally understood why there were no records about that mysterious Mentor in the Association archives.
Perhaps the Black Forest incident back then was a secret surveillance operation or purge targeting this exiled "Oak Sage."
Just as he prepared to delve deeper to unearth more details about this purge...
He discovered he had reached the end.
All subsequent archives related to Project Child of the Forest and the "Oak Sage" abruptly ceased.
"All relevant core archives were transferred from the London Branch Archives in 1871 under the 'Geneva Third Confidentiality Protocol,' by direct order of the Supreme Executive Council."