Chapter 399 Someone Wanted Enoch
On her way back to the hotel, Zara received a message from Vivian.
Vivian said she had noticed someone watching them.
Zara frowned.
That was strange.
Vivian was an ordinary human. Adolph and Bruno were far more unusual than she was. If anyone should have detected surveillance, it should have been one of them.
And since Vivian had raised the alarm, the watcher clearly was not Adolph or Bruno. It was unlikely to be someone from the production crew either.
Zara texted her back to ask what had happened, then hurried toward the hotel.
Vivian replied, [I don't know. I just feel like someone has been watching Enoch and me.]
Not the rest of the cast.
Specifically Vivian and Enoch.
Zara found that interesting.
Someone actually dared to target Enoch right under her nose.
There were only two possibilities. Either it was nothing more than a paparazzo chasing celebrity gossip, or someone from the Divine World had bypassed Zara and gone straight after Enoch.
If it was the latter, she would not let it slide.
Whatever they wanted, why not watch her? Why target an innocent child instead?
When Zara reached the area around the hotel, she immediately sensed that something was wrong.
A faint, unnatural chill lingered nearby, seeping into her skin without warning.
An ordinary person would never have noticed it. It was an unsettling presence suspended in the air, as though whoever had left it behind had retreated the moment they sensed Zara approaching.
They had not come for her.
They really had been targeting Vivian's group.
The instant Zara arrived, they had withdrawn, clearly unwilling to let her discover their trail.
The hotel was small but elegant and peaceful. It had only four floors, all relatively low, and each room on the upper levels had its own balcony.
Adolph was standing on a third-floor balcony, looking down. When he saw Zara return, he visibly relaxed.
Bruno stood beside him. Both had removed their headset microphones, and their expressions were complicated.
"I never imagined having her around would make us feel this safe," Bruno said.
Adolph fell silent.
Then he frowned. "You really couldn't identify that presence?"
Bruno was the most gifted member of their clan when it came to sensing auras.
He shook her head. "I honestly couldn't. All I could tell was that it didn't belong to anyone from our clan. If it wasn't someone from the Black Clan, then it had to be... a mystic beast."
Mystic beasts had never truly gotten along with their people. The peace between them was largely superficial.
Under the agreed plan to invade Earth, the Upper Realm had sent some people to infiltrate human society while others operated openly.
Few mystic beast factions had formally joined the alliance. Many had no interest in invading Earth at all, but some remained intensely eager to do so.
After all, those creatures relied on human flesh for nourishment.
The peace treaty had forced them to abandon that feeding habit, at least publicly.
Yet every year, people continued to disappear without explanation throughout the Divine World.
They had discovered an entirely new world populated by defenseless humans.
If the Divine World had not had plans of its own, and if Earth's natural suppressive effect had not weakened them, humanity would have been devoured down to the last scrap long ago.
Even so, there were plenty of powerful mystic beasts. They were always finding ways to send a few of their kind to Earth.
The incident in Country F had been one such attempt.
If Bruno believed the presence belonged to a mystic beast, then they were dealing with something extremely dangerous.
The creature had to be highly intelligent, with at least some of its abilities intact. Worse, it had clearly set its sights on someone in the group.
Under those circumstances, Bruno and Adolph were potential targets too.
Mystic beasts were not particularly selective about whom they attacked.
There were simple-minded idiots like Aurelion, but there were also plenty of lawless creatures like Noctilion, who cared only about satisfying their own desires and committed atrocities unlike anything Earth had ever seen.
Those were the creatures Adolph and Bruno feared.
When they first sensed the presence, they had nearly failed to keep their expressions under control despite the cameras still rolling.
Enoch had also seemed restless at the time, while Vivian tried to calm him down.
Now that Zara had arrived, both of them felt considerably safer.
Zara could not go upstairs while filming was underway, but when she overheard their conversation, she still rolled her eyes.
Adolph frowned. "Maybe I'm imagining things, but I think she just rolled her eyes at us."
"You're not imagining it," Bruno replied. "She definitely did. She probably can't understand why we'd be afraid of anything."
Adolph sighed admiringly. "As expected of the woman I chose. Even the way she rolls her eyes is graceful and beautiful."
Bruno fell silent.
For a moment, he wondered whether Adolph had developed some kind of delusional disorder.
Beautiful, perhaps.
But if he could look at Zara and see elegance, what else could it possibly be?
Zara circled the hotel grounds once. The presence had already faded considerably, which suggested that its owner was not especially powerful.
Still, if it had dared to target Vivian and Enoch, it probably had other abilities at its disposal.
Zara sent Vivian a message.
[Don't worry. I checked the area and didn't find anything unusual. I'll stay nearby and keep watch. As long as I'm here, no one is getting their hands on you.]
Vivian relaxed slightly after reading it.
Then she remembered what Spencer had told her before they left. Gritting her teeth, she sent Zara another message.
[Come over. There's something I need to tell you.]
Zara went to find her.
When Vivian saw her, she pulled her aside and lowered her voice. "Before we left, Spencer warned me that something might try to take Enoch. He said bringing you along would be safer."
"Take him?" Zara raised an eyebrow. "Someone wants to abduct Enoch?"
Vivian nodded. "That's what he said. He told me that a being like Enoch would be irresistibly tempting to certain creatures."
That wording sounded rather suggestive.
But once Zara remembered what Enoch actually was, the implication became far more disturbing.
He had been artificially created. If some creature found him irresistible, then it was almost certainly nothing normal.
No wonder it had dared to test the waters despite Zara's presence.
Back home, Spencer and the others had always been nearby, and there were too many people from the Upper Realm for anyone to act recklessly.
Now that they were abroad and Zara appeared to be the only one protecting Enoch, something had finally made its move.
The realization infuriated her.
How dare it underestimate her?
Once she found it, she did not care what it was. She would make it pay ten times over!
Zara's voice turned serious. "Don't worry. Nothing will happen to him."
She had barely finished speaking when Adolph and Bruno appeared nearby, clearly hoping to listen in.
Zara looked at them thoughtfully. "You two are a separate matter. My protection fee is ten million dollars each."
Adolph and Bruno fell silent.
Yes.
She had raised her rates.