Chapter 75: Hunters Around the World

The remote award ceremony concluded as Sir Henderson's expectant image vanished from the crystal screen.The three members of the Iron Triangle exchanged glances.

"I must admit, that old fossil Henderson may be inflexible at times, but he's quite generous when it comes to bonuses," Julian remarked, immediately restoring his trademark blend of sarcasm and elegance once he confirmed the communication had ended. He stretched, his joints emitting a series of crisp cracks.

"Still, with the Paris trouble temporarily resolved, I'm practically growing mold here."

"Coincidentally, I have an old friend researching 'Celtic Primitive Runes' who recently became a visiting researcher at the British Museum. I need to pay him a visit and borrow some of those precious manuscripts from their London division that are never lent out."

Lin Jie and William naturally had no objections to this.

After submitting their vacation and academic exchange applications through I.A.R.C.'s internal secure channels to their respective departments, the three of them embarked on their journey back to London together.

This time, they no longer needed to take the smuggler's freighter filled with fishy odors and dangers like they had on their way over.

Thanks to their official status, the Association arranged the fastest and most comfortable return method—boarding the new luxury steam liner crossing the English Channel.

After a smooth and comfortable overnight voyage, when they arrived at the busy white cliff docks of Dover, England, an unexpected yet perfectly reasonable figure was already waiting at the VIP channel exit.

It was none other than the burly Marcus.

He had clearly received advance notice from the London division and had specifically come to await the return of these special agents.

When he saw Lin Jie's trio, particularly spotting Curator Julian himself among them, his face first broke into a look of admiration mixed with simple honesty.

But soon that smile transformed into an expression of financial pain.

"Alright, alright gentlemen, I know you just want to go back and rest properly," Marcus announced in his booming voice. "But according to our field department's old tradition, any team that successfully prevents a major crisis and returns alive must accept 'tributes' from everyone!"

"So all expenses at the 'Old Captain' bar tonight are on the field department's tab! None of you three are allowed to escape!"

His words carried great momentum, yet couldn't conceal the heartache he felt about footing the bill.

This was both a rugged celebratory tradition within I.A.R.C. and an important social event for the London division.

Unable to refuse such enthusiastic hospitality, the three found themselves led by their "reluctant" host Marcus into that high-level hunter bar—"The Old Captain"—which only opened to Association investigators of level five and above, or freelance hunters with special contributions.

This bar differed completely from the gentleman's club-style common area near the administrative district that Lin Jie had seen before.

This place was the true social heart of the blood-and-fire profession called "hunter."

The entire bar was converted from the cabin of a 16th-century Spanish Armada flagship, the air permeated with a complex aroma blending Cuban cigars, rum, nitroglycerin, and a hint of aged blood.

Instead of elegant oil paintings, the walls displayed various ferocious UMA head specimens, scarred remnants of grotesque armaments, and an enormous world map that covered almost an entire wall.

The map used differently colored thumbtacks glowing with spiritual light to mark real-time fluctuations of "anomalous energy" across the globe.

Dozens of distinctly dangerous men and women gathered here in small groups.

Each of them looked like characters straight out of thrilling adventure novels.

Lin Jie noticed a man in the corner of the bar counter, radiating an aura that kept others at distance, sporting a Tsarist officer-style mustache, silently polishing his peculiarly shaped pale white whip with a vodka-soaked linen cloth. The whip appeared to be crafted from some creature's spinal column.

At another card table nearby, several dark-skinned "Guardians" from the Egyptian division, adorned with ancient sun god tattoos, conversed quietly in an ancient language Lin Jie couldn't understand.

They had no glasses before them, only several cups of black tea emitting exotic spice aromas.

The entire bar brimmed with vitality and stories.

This was the harbor where inner world hunters could lower their guard and reveal their true selves after surviving near-fatal hunts.

The arrival of the Iron Triangle immediately became the bar's focal point.

Nearly everyone's gaze turned toward these three new "legends" who had just returned from the bloody storms of Paris.

Amid good-natured laughter and whistling, Marcus generously ordered three glasses of the bar's most expensive strong liquor for them, called "Kiss of the Abyss," reportedly brewed from kraken ink mixed with Scottish Highland spring water.

"To our new members, to our heroes!" Marcus roared, raising his glass high.

Amid loud cheers and clinking glasses, Lin Jie genuinely felt this pure, scalding sense of collective honor unique to hunters.

Soon, various hunters approached curiously with their drinks.

And Lin Jie finally got the chance to listen up close to those untold true stories from "colleagues" hailing from different corners of the world.

"Hey kid, nice work! I heard you made those Eternal Serpent scumbags dance like puppets in Paris?" A tall American hunter wearing worn cowboy leather with two large revolvers at his hip downed his whiskey and spoke bluntly in his Texas-accented English. "That's how it's done! To deal with these gutter-dwelling scum, you need brains even craftier than theirs!"

He seemed quite drunk, his words flowing freely once he started talking.

"You have no idea how brutal our fight's been against those 'Aztec Feathered Serpent God'-worshipping Indian maniacs in Arizona! Those bastards dig out their own hearts to sacrifice to their damned 'god,' then turn into some kind of unkillable, feather-covered 'wendigo'!"

"Our bullets felt like tickling them! In the end, our division's 'bomb maniac' had to use three whole crates of alchemical explosives to blast their altar—built on a cursed ancient burial ground—straight to heaven!"

His gunpowder-flavored, heroism-tinged description gave Lin Jie a sense of the American division's wild, unrestrained combat style.

The silent Egyptian "Guardian" beside him shook his head disdainfully after listening.

"Barbaric," he commented succinctly in his heavily accented voice. "True power never comes from explosions, but from... rules."

He slowly showed Lin Jie the bracelet woven from scarab shells and papyrus on his wrist.

"Just last month, those so-called 'archaeologists' from Britain brutally blasted open an unrecorded Fourth Dynasty pharaoh's tomb in Thebes. Their actions disturbed the 'Soul Guardian' sleeping there."

"That thing had no form or substance, immune to all those clattering physical weapons."

"Our division dispatched two full squads, but ultimately relied on me using this scarab bearing 'Goddess Isis'' blessing, reciting the 'True Names of the Dead' incantation for seven full hours, to successfully seal its existence back into the sarcophagus where it belongs."

The Egyptian Guardian's words carried confidence in runes, curses, and ritual magic, along with undisguised contempt for the British colonial government's predatory "archaeological" practices.

As he listened, Lin Jie quickly correlated these fragmented pieces of information with the major historical events of 1888 that he knew.

He understood that the "Indian maniacs" mentioned by the American hunter reflected the final phase of the U.S. government's brutal "ethnic genocide" war against Native Americans in actual history.

And the "brutal excavation" described by the Egyptian Guardian perfectly captured the colonial-era "Egyptology" fever sweeping Europe at that time.

These inner world conflicts were never isolated;they intertwined with the historical currents of the surface world in hidden yet profound ways.

Just then, a slightly provocative young voice suddenly cut in.

"Sounds like each of your battles carried plenty of courage and glory," said another young "cowboy" also from the American division, appearing barely twenty years old.

His face bore traces of genius arrogance, his holster polished to a shine.

Lin Jie noticed the silver "Rookie Ranking" top fifty badge pinned to his chest.

"But if I may be blunt," he turned his gaze unabashedly toward Lin Jie, the guest of honor at this celebration, "I've heard about your Paris legend, Mr. Lin."

"Apparently you barely fired any shots, didn't personally kill a single enemy, yet dismantled a major crisis just through some 'clever planning.' I admit that's impressive."

"But I'm just curious..." He grinned, revealing white teeth, his smile carrying undisguised skepticism.

"If you didn't have a powerful fighter like Sergeant William charging into battle beside you, when those fanged monsters stand less than three meters away from you, could those 'clever plans' still pop out of your head as calmly as they do now?"

This gunpowder-laced, half-joking, half-serious "probing" made the atmosphere around the table somewhat subtle.

Before Lin Jie could respond, a powerful hand covered with thick calluses and scars already rested on the young cowboy's shoulder.

It was William.

The veteran had somehow positioned himself behind Lin Jie.

He didn't speak a word, just watched the young cowboy quietly with those calm yet pressure-filled gray eyes.

The gaze held no anger, no threat—only the pure "indifference" of a survivor who had seen mountains of corpses regarding an inexperienced child.

Under the weight of his heavy aura, the young American prodigy's smile slowly froze.

He eventually shrugged somewhat awkwardly and raised his glass.

"Alright, alright, I was just joking, don't take it seriously, Sergeant."

Only then did William withdraw his hand.

Julian, already slightly tipsy, seized the moment to pull Lin Jie and William aside to a quiet corner, setting aside the brief unpleasantness as a new round of revelry began.