The Record of Unusual Creatures

The apocalypse had arrived, but the ancient civilization pushed it back just as the world was about to end time and time again. Through multiple folds of the world’s information, they had turned a world that should have been closed alongside the apocalypse into an open system, avoiding a horrible future—future where everything was annihilated.

So every time the world was damaged to its very limit, and just as the power of the Mad Lord was about to consume all order, the world would restart. It was like reading a file and starting over. The ancient civilization had used this way to reject the apocalypse, and until today, the cycle and delay had already happened too many times to be counted.

While the delaying tactic seemed indefinite, the truth showed that the ancient civilization could not totally pull it off.

The world was regressing, and the heritors who were supposed to find a way to totally defeat the Mad Lord and rebuild the civilization were regressing as well. The complete universe had been weakening with every reset. The battle that used to happen in the stars was now limited to the planet’s surface, and the heritors were reduced from originally powerful beings to mere commoners so many generations later.

Based on the records in the Heart of God’s data vault, there were thirteen leaders of the heritors when the era had restarted, but after so many Turns of the Era, the leaders had all weakened, and some were totally corrupted and consumed by the powers of the Mad Lord, and after the world had restarted for a hundred-odd times, most of them had totally vanished, and even those who had survived till the more recent eras could barely remember anything from the first era.

They could only remember things from the past few cycles or things limited to the last cycle.

That Emperor Berentine and Princess Constance of Dragon Empire were probably the only heritors with an intact memory.

If even the leaders with the strongest minds were in this state, forget the normal soldiers who had followed them.

So, the truth of this indefinitely delayed apocalypse and the will of the ancient civilization had been lost in the river of time. After the Holy King of Haersonca forgot how to retrieve the data from the “Heart of God”, no one could find the ancient knowledge, so Constance only knew of the war that happened in the real world during the Turn. But she was totally ignorant of the fact that deep in the world, in the echoes of the distorted history, another war was taking place simultaneously.

The Turn of the Eras was actually two separate wars.

“The guardian fleet has engaged the enemy. Damage light. Creating a stable dimensional pathway, reinforcements will arrive in fifteen minutes.”

“The combat droids have engaged the enemy, loses negligible, deploying bunkers and fire support bases, the path forward has opened up.”

“Formation of a dimensional anomaly detected, unusual data fluctuations detected, the reversal of the wheels of time detected… Wheel of time stabilized, confirming dimensional expansion ahead… computing actual dimensional model.”

The eternally chaotic skies of Gorgon’s Abyss suddenly distorted as massive globs of red clouds were being roiled by some unseen energy and became a fragmented, almost parallel interference pattern-like structure, and in that upside-down sea of clouds, countless of shadows appeared.

They were of distant continents, broken stars, and wreckages of starships, ancient echoes from different eras.

“When the Turn of the Eras starts, changes are not only limited to the physical world,” Hao Ren said as he looked on at the changing skyline, with the droid swarm already reacting and the bunker droids swiftly deploying forward bases. “The fragments of the world lines’ have stacked together after so many cycles of annihilation, and it became a deeply layered world, and the Mad Lord’s incursion will happen in both worlds. In other words, ever since the heritors lost the memories of this place, the resistance of the worlds of order was limited to the physical world, and in this ‘deep world’, the Mad Lord’s powers expanded with impunity…”

Vivian then took a deep breath in, “So since then, their resistance had been faltering every quicker without any hope of victory. And as the world crumbled from within, they knew nothing about it?!”

“Yes, Haersonca’s era was the last era where this two battles were fought simultaneously, but ever since the Holy King was turned into the Tree of Life and were eternally tied to the end of that era, there was a large gap in the inheritance of the next era, and once a gap appears, the future is destined to damnation.” Hao Ren shook his head, “But that doesn’t matter, Nolan has found the information we need in the Heart of God’s data vault, so let the L’Haronneans fight for their physical world, and for the battle in this ‘deep world’… Let us fight on their behalf.”

A low hum appeared from the clouds below, as an argent shadow pierced through the clouds and landed near the small planet Hao Ren was on. The Petrachelys had arrived, and Nolan’s voice rang, “Don’t just stand there, get a move on!”

Lily was surprised. “Nolan… weren’t you busy base-building at the planet’s core?”

“The core facilities are already completed, and I have already established a stable connection. The rest can be handled by my servers, and I’ll just command it remotely.” Nolan’s gleeful voice rang, “As a top internet star spaceship, I sure as hell won’t pass on the opportunity for a selfie in front of a massive fleet!”

Hao Ren facepalmed, “Be serious. This battle won’t be easy. While you can run amok on L’Haronne by yourself, but a few generations ago they were a galaxy-spanning race, and even further back… they may even fight the guardians on even footing, and we are facing a corrupted version of them, even worse.”

As the combat droids were busy setting up the defensive perimeter, Hao Ren, Lily and Vivian stood on the bridge of the Petrachelys.

“The main enemies we are facing are the fragments of the cycles of annihilation.” Nolan’s holographic projection floated in the air, and after Hao Ren’s warning, she, too, had become serious. “I’ve found the basic process of this ‘world reset’ system in the data vault of the Heart of God and found that it had a rather massive flaw. The ancestor civilization had never reached the level where they could control the cosmic data. They had used the power of the apocalypse to cover the deficiency of their technology, and the entire process of the resetting is actually not-controlled. It will restart the world, but what it becomes after the reset, or how many things will remain is an unknown quantity. So, it left a huge amount of system errors and ‘gaps’ that allowed the Mad Lord to grow. And these gaps were piled on for eras upon eras, and once the Mad Lord’s powers spread, they become the most susceptible parts of them all.”

“And frankly speaking, this was a promising civilization,” the MDT sighed, “They have collected every data of the universe and studied them, and even tried to manipulate them, this is the preliminary technological step before creating the warp engine. They were already on the right path, and if they could continue on, they could step out of the universe, and become one of the super civilizations that navigates the void… what a waste, what a waste.”

Hao Ren did not say anything, and only focused on the data send by the probes in the front line.

The data shown that there was a massive dimensional distorting structure rapidly forming, it was coming out from the depths of the world and turning from ethereal into a physical, as it engulfed L’Haronne in a hyper-dimension-like method, and the structure was like an ant hive. The Gorgon’s Abyss had become part of this dimensional structure, and at the edge of the abyss, fluctuating signs of the power of madness were slowly appearing within the expanding dimension.”

“If Constance had known of the existence of this battlefield…” Lily spat her tongue out as she looked at that terrifying dimensional structure. “Mr. Landlord, it is not me chickening out, but most people would do a tactical repositioning if they found out the truth right?”

“She is a stout and valiant warrior, but that does not mean she won’t be distracted. With the heritors have regressed to this level, Constance and her knights would not be of use in this battlefield. In that case, might as well not let her know about it, at least before the battle ends.” Hao Ren shook his head. “Of course, if needs be, Rheia will tell her everything.”

“Is there a reason why you insist on Constance completing the final battle?” Vivian glanced at Hao Ren.

“The inheritance should be completed by a heritor, any excessive help is no longer help, rather it comes charity, and they do not need our charity.” Hao Ren nodded. “Another reason is the setting within the Heart of God, it will detect and record the result of the battle for the Turn of the Era, and the mark of the end of the war is the result of the last battle in the physical world. I don’t know what will happen if an outsider completing this process… But based on the program in the Heart of God, the only people that could end the cycle of the Annihilation, are the heritors themselves.”

A broadcast then rang on the bridge, “Detecting a large number of physical units appearing at the edge of the dimension. Analyzing energy readings… The taint of madness confirmed. Guardian fleet has already engaged the enemy, the droid swarm has also engaged the enemy. All automated bunkers have also engaged.”

Hao Ren smiled as he turned on the comms, and Salaman appeared on the holographic projection.

“Commander Salaman, I’ll leave the flanks to you.”

Salaman laughed heartily, “Hahaha, don’t you worry, observer, fighting these monsters is what we guardians do best!”

Hao Ren then ended the communication and looked at Nolan, “Let the droids prepare the ‘test subjects’. It is a good opportunity to test them out before we fight the Mad Lord proper.”

…

The Dragon Empire, the battlefield between the Northern Six Provinces and the Heartlands.

The fully recovered Duke Owen and Constance stood on the city battlements as the imperial army was slowly forming up in the distance as military-grade shields were deployed in layers, as it looked like a shimmering shoreline.

From that imposing army formations, an aura of darkness and decay reeked.

The corruption had already affected the imperial army, be it the Ebon Blades or normal soldiers. It was probably impossible to find a proper living person.

Besides, what was the situation within the interior areas of the Heartlands, which was locked down by the Ebon Blades?

Constance did not know the details, but she knew that this battle that had repeated itself across the eras would continue to happen.

Heavy footfalls thundered from the city beneath, and the giants, known as the “guardians” were marching towards the battlefield as an overwhelmingly powerful energy current unimaginable by human spellcasters surged around them.

Now that they were there, perhaps the war would head in a different direction…