The Record of Unusual Creatures

The light dawned on Hao Ren when he saw the runes. The many fragmented as well as incredible clues suddenly became clear and had the support of evidence. The Ancient Magic Empire of Holletta and the rebellion of the deicidal race at the Gate of Solenne were connected even though they were hundreds of millions of light years apart. The two civilizations, despite their vast difference in development, were involved in the same vortex of the incident.

“The mage emperors of Holletta obtained their knowledge from the deicide.” It was no longer speculation but an empirical fact, and the evidence was engraved on the wall.

“It is the runic technique of the treacherous children,” the MDT said when it found the record from its database. “The material of this ruin is in no way near the interstellar alloy of the deicidal race, but the power of these runes is real; it has blocked the energy explosion that took place here. That’s why the chamber on the outside is completely intact.”

“So is this evidence of a crime?” Vivian asked in a whisper. “It seems that the relationship between the mage emperors and the deicides is indisputable.”

“The clues already exist. The ancient mage emperor got the technique of creating god-like creatures from the deicide, and the price was to remain silent on the assassination of the goddess. The mage emperors used this technology to create the powerful demon hunter, but before he could make use of it, the angry First Born had wiped them off the planet,” Hao Ren said while shaking his head. “Now we have just found the evidence.”

Lily blinked and looked at Hao Ren and then the runes on the wall. Her ears flicked. “But something seems not right.”

“What’s on your mind?” Vivian immediately turned to look at Lily. The husky maiden could always see those details that others overlooked—it was something that even the proud ancient vampire admitted to.

“Didn’t you say before”—Lily crossed her arms—”that the ancient mage emperors created the demon hunter (Ancients) on the premise that they were faithful to the goddess? Then we cannot rule out the possibility that they turned into the god killers.”

Hao Ren and Vivian nodded in unison. It was indeed a contradiction. But if they accepted the theory, they had no explanation for the runes on the wall in front of them.

Lily pointed to the corpses on the ground. Those people died 10,000 years ago, but in this place where time had once stood still, their death was only a matter of a few days. “And these Holletta people, no matter how powerful they were, they were only terrestrial civilization. What could they do to help the deicide? Why would the deicides want to teach them these technologies? Human creation technology might not be that surprising, but these runes are super-advanced even to the deicidal race.”

Hao Ren pinched his forehead. He knew what Lily said, which he had also noticed not long ago, was indeed questionable.

At first, Hao Ren was not knowledgeable enough, and he did not give it a second thought about the possible connection between Holletta’s Ancient Magic Civilization and the deicidal war. But as Hao Ren learned more of the knowledge beyond the mortal realm, he gradually realized that the deicidal war was a disaster as terrible as it was epic. With the power of beyond comprehension that two warring sides possessed, it became questionable that this tiny planet Holletta on the fringe of civilization sphere could be involved in the deicidal war. Even if the ancient magic was more powerful than it was today, the civilization was only a rookie in interstellar colonization even in its own planetary system. What ability they had to play a role in the conspiracy?

Hao Ren now knew how wide the gap between the ancient civilization of Holletta and the deicides was. He used to think that the deicides used technology transfer as a bribe to prevent the ancient mage emperors from responding to the cry of the goddess of creation. But now this conjecture had become increasingly untenable. The mighty deicide need not worry about this backward civilization. There were plenty of arguments for this: there were many more civilizations in the universe that did not respond to the call of the goddess, and Hao Ren had found some of the wreckage, but no evidence suggested that the deicides had ever roped in or bribed these civilizations.

Bear in mind, these civilizations were much powerful than Holletta.

Hao Ren looked up and exchanged a look with Vivian. He saw the same confusion in her eyes.

“Maybe the elf who uses the Sacred Flame could give us the answer when she wakes up,” Vivian said.

Vivian did not call the Sacred Flame Incarnate a demon hunter or Ancient because she did not look like an experimental subject from the test tube, and her elven characteristics told her that she was not a demon hunter. The Sacred Flame may have just been a by-product of fusing the power of God to an ordinary race. Perhaps the immature technique had caused the elf to go insane.

However, everything was just a guess. They still had to wait until the elf woke up and was able to talk before they could find out the truth.

For the time being, Hao Ren and the MDT continued to comb the chamber for more clues.

It had been confirmed that the explosion in the central lab was the cause of the abandonment of the experimental base. The blast instantly destroyed the central lab and killed everyone inside, but the explosion did not affect the outside chamber. The “divine” runes inscribed on the lab wall had kept the shockwave in and allowed people on the outside to escape death. When people on the outside knew about the accident, they did not try to open the door. Perhaps with the use of some monitoring devices, personnel on the outside had learned that the central lab was completely destroyed and there was nothing worth saving. Or they may have been worried about the “monster” in the central lab. So the surviving personnel decided to abandon the base. They sealed the base, evacuated with the research materials to another place where they eventually synthesized the first “perfect creatures.”

The out-of-control Sacred Flame Incarnate must be the cause of the explosion.

In the melted pedestal in the center of the chamber, Hao Ren found a deformed, distinctive elven-style metal bracelet made of fine vine-like alloy wire. Later, he found another bracelet on the body of the elf, who was still unconscious. The showed that pedestal in the center of the lab was indeed prepared for the elf.

Probably because the bracelet the elf was carrying the bracelet with her, it suffered little damage from the energy blast.

When examining these clues, Vivian asked, “Why time had stood still here for 10,000 years?”

It reminded Hao Ren about this question, which he almost had forgotten.

The Ancient Magic Empire was not capable of controlling time. It had no way to stop time for 10,000 years in the ruins.

Space-time magic was not unusual on this planet; even Hymer had mastered a couple of this magic such as time acceleration or stagnation. But the mages never thought of these magics as the ability to manipulate time. Most of them regarded the magic as a short-range, temporary-field spell that achieved the effects of simulating time acceleration or deceleration by interfering with material movement within the spellcasting area. In the Ancient Magic Empire, space-time spells were even more powerful, but they did not go beyond simulation.

No one on the planet had ever known the truth of the passage of time.

“Maybe it has something to do with these runes?” Hao Ren frowned as he looked at the divine runes on the wall. “The deicidal race should have this ability. At the very least, a small experimental base like this was not that difficult for them.”

“It is also possible that the energy explosion has distorted the space-time structure here.” The MDT also joined the discussion. “The density of the runes on the wall suggests that there must be powerful energy in the room. Perhaps all the ancient facilities on the Gloom Mountains were made to serve this lab. When all the energy converged into one single point, the energy the explosion released could have distorted the space and time. Coupled with the containment effect of the runes that kept the energy in the confined space, the space-time distortion was amplified.”

Hao Ren’s brows knit together. Everything was just a guess. He needed proof. His instinct told him that there must be something yet undiscovered, hidden under the melted ruins.

Suddenly, the thought of the notes that Hao Ren found in the external lab crossed came to mind.

Divine decree. Divine cells. Fusion.

It was impossible for the Hollettans to create divine cells out of thin air. The mortals needed a carrier to perceive and manipulate divine power. How did the divine decree and power fall into the hands of the ancient mage emperors?

What kind of medium did the mage emperors use to carry that power and infuse it into biological cells to make it into a “product”?

If this place was the initial experimental site of demon hunter—the perfect creature plan, there must be an initial source of divine power, which was the energy source of the entire project.

The source of divine power should be in the central lab. Those people who evacuated from this base had used the divine cells to complete the subsequent works. They did not have the opportunity to take anything out from the central lab. So even if the explosion had destroyed everything here, as the carrier of divine power, should there not have been some debris left?

“Look for it, there should be an energy source here,” Hao Ren immediately said. “They wanted to make the original divine cells, then they must have a divine power source. They couldn’t make it out of thin air. That power source should be in some container.”

Vivian froze. “Maybe it has been blown up.”

“But it should have been some debris left at least. It’s a carrier of divine power!”

Everyone scrambled to search in deformed rubbles for any fragments that looked suspicious, not of the ancient civilization. Just as they began to rummage through the place, a senior knight rushed in.

“Sir! Sir!” The knight said in a panic. “She has woken up! She has woken up!”

Hao Ren was started for a moment before he realized what the knight meant: the Sacred Flame Incarnate had regained consciousness.

Vivian noticed a strange expression on the knight’s face. “Did she say anything when she woke up?”

“Yes… Yes!” The knight nodded frantically. His face had an incredible expression. “She said… She said she was Lorissa!”