Chapter 38: Hugo Has Arrived! (Please Vote)

Albert looked around, carefully counting heads, and realized that Leonard was indeed missing.

Only the hollow, bottomless eye sockets of the skulls remained, and in the flickering, unsteady light, it felt as though countless eyes were silently watching this group of uninvited guests from the darkness. Some skulls tilted slightly, their jaws agape in an eternal, frozen, silent scream. Others were covered in a layer of slick, grayish-white mold, resembling the sweat of the dead, gleaming with a cold, eerie luster under the light.

"He... he hasn't been taken by something, has he?" a lackey’s voice trembled.

Albert panicked. Regardless of how "lowly" he considered Leonard’s status, losing a classmate in the catacombs would surely lead to dire consequences if something happened to him. He might even be branded a murderer—the conflicts between him and Leonard were common knowledge, and many had heard him propose the "Old Mine" outing.

However, Albert soon noticed a clue. From the leftmost of the three tunnels, a rhythmic, light sound emerged, like human footsteps; faint shadows cast by flickering light danced upon the bone walls.

He breathed a sigh of relief and pointed to the tunnel on the left: "He must have walked ahead... damn it, I haven't even explained the rules yet!"

Michel Verne asked, "Should we follow him?"

Albert hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Let’s go! We’ll follow him and see what kind of trick he’s playing."

As the leader of the group, and with everyone beginning to grow accustomed to the eerie environment, their courage returned. They clamored to catch up with Leonard and teach him a lesson.

Albert gritted his teeth and led the way, hurrying in the direction Leonard had taken. Beneath their feet, the slick gravel and silt emitted an unsettling squelching sound, as if every step were landing on something unclean.

Cold water dripped incessantly from the vaulted ceiling, tapping "drip... drip... drip..." against skulls, shoulders, and the glass of their gas lanterns. The sound was infinitely amplified in the dead silence of the tunnel, like a slow countdown striking at everyone’s nerves.

The tunnel stretched endlessly forward. Where the light reached, there were only more, deeper walls of bone, disappearing into an impenetrable darkness. As the beam swept across, the empty eye sockets of the skulls seemed to swallow the light instantly, leaving deeper shadows, as if something flickered at the edge of their vision.

Of course, the silence was not absolute. In the gaps where everyone held their breath, they could faintly hear an extremely subtle, indistinguishable "rustling" sound, like countless bone fragments rubbing together, or perhaps something slowly crawling in an unseen corner.

"My God..." someone in the group groaned with a sob. The sound stirred a strange echo in the bone tunnel, seemingly awakening something that had been slumbering, drawing an even deeper silence from the darkness ahead.

"Shut up!" Albert scolded.

They wandered underground for nearly ten minutes, but not only did they fail to catch up to Leonard, even those faint footsteps and the glimmer of light had vanished.

Only the heavy breathing of the few men and the swaying gaslight remained.

"He... he hasn't really met with an accident, has he?" Michel Verne was no longer calm. Forced by his father to study in Paris, he had relied on connections to befriend Albert and his circle. Today, hearing that Albert intended to prank a country bumpkin from the Alps, he had tagged along with enthusiasm. He had never expected a situation like this; had he known, he would not have joined in the fun.

They walked for a while longer until they reached a "bone hall." In the center stood a pillar made entirely of skulls, reaching the ceiling, surrounded by several "pyramids" of skulls.

Albert signaled, "Let's rest for a moment."

The lackeys breathed a sigh of relief, some even collapsing to the ground. In a state of tension, physical energy is depleted rapidly; they wouldn't have even been out of breath covering the same distance on a street in broad daylight.

Only Albert forced himself to remain calm, raising his gas lantern high. The beam trembled as it swept forward; at the end of the light, an arched junction opened like a giant maw, revealing an even deeper, thicker darkness.

"Damn it, where on earth did Leonard go? Could it have been our imagination?"

"Should we call out for him?"

"Are you an idiot? What if calling out attracts something else?"

The group fell into silence. The air felt frozen and biting, stinging their lungs with every breath.

Just then, a light appeared in the tunnel ahead—a green light, as if ignited by Satan himself from the depths of hell, casting a ghostly glow on their terrified faces.

Then, a voice devoid of emotion, like that of a dead man, drifted from the darkness: "Are you looking for me?"

Immediately above the green light, a face appeared, grinning with extreme malevolence. Because the light shone from below, the shadows of the facial contours were exceptionally heavy, appearing dark and terrifying in the gloom.

"Who among you wants to come with me?"

Albert de Rohan, Michel Verne, and the lackeys forgot how to breathe.

...

More than ten seconds later, two kilometers away in another private tunnel, a group of Parisian occult enthusiasts were conducting black magic experiments. Suddenly, they heard faint but exceptionally clear, tragic screams from the depths of the distant tunnels, as if a devil from the depths of hell were roaring.

The sound was continuous and lingering, echoing repeatedly against the narrow rock walls and bone-lined tunnels, creating a strange resonance that made the surrounding white bones tremble slightly.

"It worked! It worked!"

"We’ve successfully summoned the devil!"

"Really? Hurry, hurry, continue the ritual!"

The group, clad in black robes, scrambled to kneel before the pentagram on the ground, prostrating themselves again and again, their foreheads striking the cold ground with a rhythmic "thud-thud" sound...

————————

It was another cold Monday. However, as it was already February, the weather had turned slightly warmer, and the various odors drifting through the streets and alleys of Paris had become more pungent.

Although the initial scale of the sewer system meant Paris was no longer the "city of filth" it had been 100 years ago, the speed of urban reconstruction lagged far behind the growth of the population.

Thus, wealthy Parisians lived in vacation villas in the suburbs during the summer—for instance, Zola would only return to Paris in winter after purchasing the Médan villa—or they would simply vacation in the south, Italy, or Spain.

Leonard took the public carriage to school on time, as usual. Only this morning, the sight of Albert jumping dashingly from his small carriage was missing.

Just as he reached the classroom door, he saw the provost, Mr. Doyne, standing there in an unprecedented move. Upon seeing him, Doyne greeted him with a beaming smile: "Mr. Sorel, you don't need to attend class this morning. Professor Gaston Boissier would like to see you."

Leonard was slightly stunned. Thinking of Professor Boissier's status, he realized it might be about the matter of *The Old Guard*. He nodded and followed Doyne out of the teaching building to the office of the school's journal editors.

Opening the door, he saw that the long conference table in the center of the hall was already full. Apart from those currently teaching, it seemed that all the professors from the Faculty of Letters were present.

Leonard spotted Professor Gaston Boissier, who had taught him before, at a glance. However, he was not sitting in the main seat at the head of the table, but in the first seat on the right.

Sitting in the main seat was an old man with white hair, a thick and neatly groomed white beard, a broad face, a high forehead, bushy eyebrows, and eyes that were calm and resolute.

His features, polished by advancing age, long-term mental stress, and a life of wandering, were rugged, appearing both majestic and powerful.

Leonard was no stranger to this old man. In his past life, he had read his collected works, the cover of which featured his photograph. In this life, his portrait hung in the corridor of the Faculty of Letters, alongside Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Molière, and Jean de La Fontaine.

And he was the only one still alive.

He was the "Conscience of France," "France's Greatest Poet," and the "Most Outstanding Representative of Romanticism"—Victor-Marie Hugo!