The Record of Unusual Creatures

Yggdrasil, the lesioned Heart of Darkness, was extremely unstable and anxious. Perhaps he had been driven to madness by the corruption and erosion of his mind, which had lasted thousands of years. Maybe, the rational part of him was almost completely corrupted. Now, this mighty demigod just wished he could die. His abnormal brain was becoming slow.

Only now Yggdrasil realized that Hao Ren could help him carry out his death wish.

But Hao Ren did not agree to his request.

“The situation may not be so as bad as you think.” Hao Ren dissuaded Yggdrasil. “You may not have a solution, but what if I do?”

At this time, the rational consciousness, which the executioner Yggdrasil had created, began to speak, “I think this makes sense. We can’t solve the problem of corruption because we are trapped in this body. But this outsider can do what we can’t.”

Hao Ren suddenly realized he had not introduced himself. He quickly turned around and said, “Allow me to introduce myself; I am—”

“I know.” The voice, soft but powerful enough to drown the noise from the storm and waves on the dark ocean, interrupting Hao Ren. “I am also a master of this world. I and another me share all the information here. I have heard you introducing yourself just now. I don’t want to reveal myself as it is very troublesome to face the other me. But your arrival has let me see a glimmer of hope.”

“Hope is an illusion,” Yggdrasil’s Heart of Darkness mumbled. “A motivation coming out of nowhere; I really don’t understand why you are so driven by this kind of thing.”

“As you can see, the darkly negative power has seriously affected the thought of another me,” said the voice in the light apologetically. “He was strong and optimistic during the first five thousand years of corruption. But the corruptive forces have gradually overwhelmed his mind. The subtle influence was almost impossible to stop. In fact, I always think that my appearance means that corruption has gotten the upper hand. When Yggdrasil decided to create an alternative consciousness to end himself, ‘he’ had bowed to the dark side of his heart.”

“Stupidity beyond belief!” the voice of the Heart of Darkness sounded angry. “Haven’t you realized that the situation is getting out of hand already? I have even lost control of my body. The lesioned organ is devouring the entire runic body physically, and has even transformed the environment of Niebelungen! The corruption has spread from the spiritual to the material world, yet you are still unaware of it!”

Hao Ren thought of the deformed dark tentacles that ran through the entire land of Niebelungen. It seemed that the tentacles had occupied the whole kingdom of Death and could break through the barrier of Midgard at any time. “What is the nature of this corruption?” Hao Ren could not help but ask.

The dark ocean rolled up its huge waves as thunder rumbled through the heavens and the earth. The light piercing through the air quickly burst into an intense light, keeping the mighty, dark ocean in check. At last, the Heart of Darkness of Yggdrasil finally calmed down, voice exhausted. “Nature… nature… Ahh, whenever I think of it, I would feel my soul is undergoing an irreversible change. But I am going to tell you anyway—if you have the guts to listen.”

Earlier, the sudden storm on the ocean shocked Hao Ren. He thought the spiritual world was crumbling. “Holy moly! Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not! This has been going on for thousands of years, but what can I do?” said the Heart of Darkness. “You want to know about the nature of the corruption? It is kind of hard to explain. I don’t even know when it has started to lurk inside my soul. But I do know that it began to attack me the moment I crossed the wall. So it happened from the very beginning. It could be a soul or something, and was confined to the realm of the soul and mind at the beginning.”

“Could it be a psychic virus?” Hao Ren suddenly said.

“That’s an interesting term,” the Heart of Darkness said. “I am afraid it is. It lurks deep inside me, feeds on my strength, and creates trouble in my mind. But this is not the worst. The most horrible thing about this thing is that it has spread out from my dreams. Can you imagine that? This monster lurking in my spiritual world comes out from my dreams and crawls into the real world! At first, I found that parts of my limbs were shrinking, so I cut them off. But those limbs soon became monsters that ravaged the world. I then found myself starting to secrete toxic fluid in the Niebelungen area. This fluid was the condensation from the hatred and madness. A poor black dragon slamming into my diseased organs went crazy the next day, so I realized that the corruption had spread from the spiritual world into the material world.”

Hao Ren was trying to figure out in his mind the nature of the corruption. He could not find any scientific and reasonable explanation. With a vague idea of the corruption, he asked, “Do you know who has planted the seed of corruption in you?”

After silent for a moment, the Heart of Darkness said, “You surely know something; otherwise you will not ask this question. Yes, the corruption could not have emerged out of thin air or been the vulnerability my mother left behind after she created me. I’m sure it comes from the enemy. All sufferings come from the forces opposing my mother. I have been investigating the matter. Though no breakthrough so far, I firmly believe that it comes from my mother’s enemy.”

“I know the war of ten thousand years ago,” said Hao Ren. “Could it be the deicidal rebels who created this corrupt factor to thwart the plan of the goddess of creation?”

“It seems that you know more than I think!” The voice of the Heart of Darkness was filled with excitement. “I am suspicious as much as convinced of you. You are either a friend of my mother or a villain. But this is not important—I couldn’t do anything now after all. Those treacherous children? You might have overestimated them. How could those fools subvert the great plan of my mother? They might have achieved some success, but they couldn’t really derail my mother’s greatest plan. They couldn’t implant the corrupt factor in my body. Behind them, there is another force, which is the real culprit, at play. That force has fought with my mother for years, and I believe that it is that force that causes my situation today.”

Hao Ren’s suspicion was confirmed. “Do you mean the Cosmic Progenitor, the voice that incited the treacherous child murdering the goddess?”

“You even know this!”

“I have been investigating this for a long time,” Hao Ren said. “I have even found the wreckage of the Gate of Solenne, but I could not find more fragments of the divine realm. I have found part of the Creation Engine. My team and I are still trying to assemble it. If you trust me, I can tell you more and show you something that you might be interested in.”

“The Gate of Solenne… The Creation Engine…” The voice in the light mumbled. “I think this guy is trustworthy.”

“Me too.” The Heart of Darkness, who rarely saw eye to eye with the voice in the light, agreed. “Okay, strange demigod, you have my attention. So what are you going to tell us?”

“I don’t know the cause of your corruption, but I have successfully controlled the guy who is homologous to your cause of corruption,” Hao Ren said, carefully choosing his words. “Do you know how the goddess of creation died?”

The dark ocean suddenly surged, rolling up giant waves up into the sky as if the sea was hanging upside down. Things were only back to normal after a long while.

“Of course, I would never forget that,” the two minds of Yggdrasil said in unison.

“if I’m not mistaken, the black sword, who killed my mother, is the creation of the Cosmic Progenitor.” Hao Ren tried to stay calm. “It is in my hands and under my control.”

The whole world turned upside down.

Hao Ren was not kicked out of the mental connection. The spiritual world had not collapsed. Yggdrasil was only emotional. Like other guardians, he remained rational and did not vent his anger on the weapon.

Hao Ren took out the Godslayer—in the form of a spiritual body.

In the spiritual world, the Godslayer appeared as a black mountain, which appeared alongside the thorny mountain of the Heart of Darkness on the dark ocean. Curiously, the Godslayer scanned the surroundings before it introduced itself. “Hi, everyone, I am Godslayer; alias, Echo Wall; childhood name, Small Sword. You can call me McStabby. Why is it so noisy here?”