The Record of Unusual Creatures

The sudden changes alarmed everyone. Hao Ren took out his plasma spear at the earliest possible moment, guarding his front. “Is it a space-time shift or just an illusion?”

“There are no signs of brainwave interference, but I have detected a space-time distortion. It is a spatial shift,” The MDT said as it quickly analyzed the data of the environmental changes. “But I didn’t find signs of teleportation. We are still on the same coordinates.”

“The same coordinates?” Hao Ren’s brows knit together. “We are still in the same place?”

“We have probably fallen into a dimension that overlaps the real world, so the location has not changed.” The MDT speculated.

“Is this the meaning of the ‘boundary’ the ghost has mentioned?” Lily said as her ears flickered.

Hao Ren shook his head, and his eyes fell on the end of the corridor. “I have no idea. Let’s go there and check it out—there seems to be someone there.”

The long hallway was bright. The white walls had photo frames hanging on them. Hao Ren had seen these portraits, which fire had damaged them before. Now it seemed that everything had gone back in time, but he still could not see the face of these portraits. A haze, swirling and twisting in the frames, shrouded the pictures.

Hao Ren looked at on the corner at the end of the hallway, which he remembered a line of bloody handwriting was there before. But now the wall was empty with only a large vase sitting under it.

At the end of the corridor, there was a wooden door, ajar with lights leaking through, and voices coming from behind the door.

A low male voice said, “…the world of humankind seems to fall into chaos again. The civilians of this country are hanging the aristocrats. It is another collapse of social order.

A young-sounding female voice followed. “The humans are always in chaos, it’s normal. After all, they have a short lifespan and difficulty in maintaining long-term stability in both their society and themselves.”

Another young male voice said, “We don’t have to worry about them. The power of this world is powerless against us. I just returned from Paris, where the divisions of the church are busy hunting the werewolves, they have no time for us.”

The young female voice was heard breathing a sigh of relief. “It will be good then. A confrontation is always—”

As Hao Ren approached the door, the voices disappeared suddenly, as if they had never been there before.

Lily squinted her eyes and took a peek behind the door before pushing it open.

It was a spacious room filled with comfortable velvet cushions and a bright light stand, as well as an oak wine cabinet filled with drinks. It looked like a lounge, yet no one was inside.

“No one is here…” Hesperides muttered to herself. “The voices could be the echoes of the past.”

“Judging from their tone of voice, the family living here is non-human,” Vivian said, recalling the voices she had heard just now.

Before Hao Ren could say anything, another voice seemed to come toward them from the other end of the hallway, and it got closer and closer.

It was the young male voice again. “I went to see Hercules. He is still in good spirits, but nightmares troubled him greatly. News of bad things are circulating in the village; it was about the nightmares and brutal murders.”

The first low male voice also spoke again. “It’s just the strange talk of the villagers, who mostly are confused by the wind with their dreams. We have checked the divine artifact; it is still in good condition. You shouldn’t be as shallow as those human beings.”

“Yes, Master Mohaben. But Hercules’ condition doesn’t look good.”

“I know, that time he took too much power from the divine artifact and brought that thing out. Though we have gotten rid of the shackles, he was infested. We should be responsible after all. You go and take Xavier…”

The voices drew nearer and nearer until they drifted past Hao Ren. But there was no one in the hallway–only voices.

Everyone was calm and only thinking that the situation was a little strange. Other than Lily’s tail was puffed-up, everything else was okay.

“It seems that this family is of the otherworldlings. I wonder if we can see the forest outside,” Vivian said as she scratched her chin thoughtfully.

Only then Hao Ren came to his realization and quickly headed to the door.

He gave the heavy oak door a push, and it swung open. Everyone’s jaw dropped to the ground.

Outside the mansion, a land, filled with gravel and sand, opened up before them. The forest, which used to be there, was gone. But the terrain it left behind told them that it was still the same place but only now became a desert.

“Where are the trees?” Lily looked around in amazement. “How come the place look like the Gobi Desert?”

“It’s heterogenization,” Vivian said as she bent down and grabbed a handful of gray sand from the ground. The sand slipped through the gaps between her fingers, producing a rustling sound. “Don’t forget that this is a different dimension, everything is mutated. These sands, I have never seen anything like this on Earth.”

“If I am not mistaken, this house is in a spatial rift or some focus of magic, located in two overlapping dimensions. The mansion in the real world has become a ruin, but the one in the other dimension is still well-preserved. Because of the stand-still space and time, many things inside the mansion have solidified and been preserved, including those echoes from the past.” Hesperides, as a caretaker at the Athens’ sanctuary, knew about the different phenomena of alien dimensions. She told of her analysis while feeling the surrounding magic energy with her senses. “What we see now should be the projection of the forest in the other dimension.”

“But that is strange,” Vivian interjected.

“What strange?” Hao Ren asked.

“The earth is a place where magic energy is weak, and the dimensional structure is solid. Except for the mysterious independent realms such as Coldpath of Mythology Era, this environment rarely occurs naturally,” Vivian explained, “unless something—such as the divine artifact—induces breakage and overlap in this dimension.”

Just as Vivian’s voice trailed off, a rumbling sound suddenly came from a high altitude.

Instinctively, Hao Ren looked up. He thought it was lightning, but he did not see anything. Only then he realized that it was an echo from the past.

Almost immediately, Hao Ren heard footsteps coming from afar as if a person was walking toward the house. He could not see anyone, but the footsteps had come before the house, and then someone knocked hard on the oak door.

Wet palm prints appeared on the door.

“Hercules! My gosh! What happen to you?”

It was a familiar female voice. Hao Ren listened carefully only to find that it was the voice of the ghost that mumbled to him earlier.

“It… it has broken through the boundary.” An unusually hoarse voice was heard saying. “I… I have dreamed of everything is burning, the dark side of the universe is about to unfold… the boundary is becoming… very fragile…”

“Hercules, your body…”

“The debris cut me, probably it has controlled me and made me cut myself.” The coarse voice sounded weak. “Get ready the ritual for me. I can fix this.”

At this time, a low male voice, seemingly coming from the hallway, chimed in. “There was a noise in the village. What was going on in the village?”

“The Glenn family home has collapsed, crushed into powder by a powerful force.”

“That thing has entered our real world?”

“Part of it, but soon there will be more,” Hercules said, his voice was weak.

“Hathaway, take Hercules to the tower, I have to go to check out to the village.”

“But, Master Mohaben, your body…”

“Don’t worry about me, I’m just going to check out the situation,” said Mohaben, who sounded confident. “Don’t forget, I used to be the most powerful master demon hunter in this part of the world!”

The echo of the past gradually went, and then the surroundings became quiet again.

Hao Ren and his little buddies looked at each other, dumbfounded.

“Did I hear it correctly?” Lily shook her ears. “My auditory sense is of four channels! It’s impossible that I was having a hallucination!”

Vivian turned her head and looked at the big mansion behind her with a strange expression. “Yes, living in the mansion is a bunch of demon hunters!”