The Record of Unusual Creatures

Three days had passed since the sudden fierce battle.

The towering walls of Fort Raven stood quietly under the night sky. The sturdy fortress made of black granite managed to withstand an unimaginably bloody battle. Even the general of the fortress could not believe that it did. The storm of Chaos and the monsters that came with the storm almost destroyed the striker towers and the Runestones of Order outside the fortress. The defenses of the Order outside Fort Raven had been wiped out. The once high-walls with crenels had become piles of grayish-black crushed gravel, no longer dotted with sentry posts. Even the wall of the fortress itself was full of battle marks like cracks and holes.

Perhaps it did not have to wait for the next storm before the wall collapsed even if a group of wandering monsters of Chaos could bring down the wall.

Philip tightened his coat and looked back at the upper fortress of Fort Raven. Under the foggy night sky, this ancient fortress appeared like a spiral volcano. Layers of granite walls and towers of different sizes formed the cliffs of the mountain. The fires that swayed between the walls and the towers looked like lava flowing down the hill. At the top of the fort, the Spire of Flames was as if a white tower that pierced through the sky. A transparent shield dropped down from the top of this white tower-like water from an umbrella, creating a spherical barrier around the fortress.

The Light of Order still looked bright, but the Spire of Flames had not been able to produce that original level of light intensity like before.

The storm of Chaos had severely damaged the Spire of Flames. The excessively strong conflict of rules had overloaded the energy core of the tower. The mages had rushed to repair the critical equipment, but they could not restore the tower to its peak performance. For a fortress that was facing assault on the border of the Chaos, the weakening of the Light of Order meant that the worst was coming. The defense capability of Fort Raven had weakened by half now.

But these things were distant for Philip, who was an ordinary small captain, a little higher in rank and knew a little more than his soldiers. But he was mostly a countryman, an uncouth soldier knowing little about the world. Except for the tragic battle of three days ago that left many people, who were better than him, died outside the fort, he knew nothing about magic. Seeing the body of soldiers guarding the wall was being carried to the back of the wall, he suddenly felt lucky that he was not among one of them. If it were not for the many years of military career numbing his senses on life and death, this veteran soldier would not be able to take up the courage to come to this wall.

Philip once again tightened his coat. It seemed that his clothes could no longer keep him warm in the cold wind of the night. It was hard to imagine that just a few days ago; it was still a hot summer here where standing on the wall for a while would have people covered in sweat. But now the temperature inside and outside of the fortress had dropped to the freezing point—it was winter.

Such was the power of Chaos. When the storm struck, it changed the climate of the area almost immediately, taking only three hours to shift from midsummer to winter. After that, the defenders of Fort Raven had also experienced the baptism of thunderstorms, hail, and blizzards. If this phenomenon happened in the first three years of the War of Chaos, the crazy weather would have claimed the life of many people.

“Sir, it seems that dawn is coming. Should we stop here?”

A voice jolted Philip out of his daze. He turned around his head and saw one of his soldiers was looking at the horizon, where a faint glimmer of light was rising.

“Don’t space out! It’s not over yet,” Philip chided. “Don’t get slack. If the monster comes again, how are you going to face your ancestor when you die?”

Taking the reprimand with their heads low, the soldiers nodded quickly. But Philip knew that he should not be too harsh to them. It was this horrible weather that was to blame. And the night patrol had also drained them completely.

But he also knew that monsters would not choose a particular time to attack. Those bastards crawling out from the Chaos would not be so kind as to give them some slack time. So this veteran soldier was still spirited as he paid close attention to any movements outside the wall.

A cold wind was blowing on the plains in front of Fort Raven, sweeping up a few broken flags and dust. Philip recognized one of the flags was of the second largest team of the Blackblade Legion. He knew that the brigade was utterly wiped out three days ago. In the battle that day, to give other teams a chance to retreat, more than 2,000 warriors stood in the way of the advancing monsters. Philip was watching from the wall as the monsters devoured the soldiers. Human bodies and limbs dissolved like cream in the hot soup of darkness.

The sacrifice of the bridge had saved the main forces of the Blackblade Legion, prevented the fortress from losing too many men at once. But it also led the chaotic monsters to attack the shield of Order of Fort Raven earlier than expected, paving the way to the overloading of the Spire of Flames.

“Sir, I heard the mages said that it was a storm of Chaos a few days ago, rising from the Sea of Carnos and blowing in from the mainland border. The forest in the south seemed to have been destroyed, and become the realm of Chaos.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Philip shot his men a glare and said coldly. He did not like the soldier mention the subject because, when recalling the scene of three days ago, it would make him shudder. The darkness and storm that struck from the sky in the south were as if it a sea wave of a few kilometers high pounding toward them. A violent wind rose in the blink of an eye as the sky dimmed. The sound of alarm sounded through the fortress when monsters emerged out of thin air and swooped at the wall. The battle was raging for a day and a night.

The mages called it the Tip of the Storm, meaning that there would be more Chaos coming. The subsequent attack might not be as fierce as of the first day, but more people would die for sure.

Philip did not want to talk, but his veteran soldiers could not keep their mouth shut, and soon they were chattering again.

“Hey, have you heard that a while ago, there was an unusually large group of beasts suddenly appeared in the forest in the south?”

“Ahh, I heard that. Why?”

“I heard that this group of beasts is unusual. It has a myriad of races, marching with much noise and fanfare in our direction.”

“All races? Then wouldn’t they fall into chaos themselves already?”

“Weirdly, this group of beasts seems to be well organized. I heard that a particularly powerful figure called the Alpha had united them.”

“Whoa, it sounds awesome. Is it a wolf as large as a hill?”

“I heard that. Yeah, a 3,500-year-old forest demonic wolf, with three heads, tooth that was half a meter long, and a paw that could smash a house in one strike.”

“What is the use of this? Look at the south; the Chaos is coming. No matter how powerful the alpha is, it is still a beast. If it does not have a divine item of the Order, the Chaos must have overrun them by now.”

Philip did not stop his men’s chatter, because he had already seen the sun rising on the horizon. Their night shift would be soon over. At this time, taking a little slack was pretty reasonable as long as no one left their post earlier.

But Philip did not know that the “3,500-year-old forest demonic wolf, with three heads, tooth that was long as half a meter” was happily leading an army of beasts, the Beast Tide, approaching the border of civilization. He did not even know that in the next moment, a new round of storm of Chaos would strike.

A sentinel first discovered the anomaly in the direction of the Black Forest. At first, he thought it was an illusion for lack of sleep. But she took a second look; the huge shadow had indeed appeared. The shadow as if a column of smoke rose in the forest as it rushed out of the woods and came in the direction of Fort Raven at an unnatural speed. On the column of smoke, monsters started to form.

The sentinel was rooted to the spot for a while before he shouted, “The Chaos is coming!”

The loud alarm sounded through the fortress, and every bell tower began to scream in a frenzy. The protective runes on the walls and surfaces of the towers started to light up one by one. There were shouts and yells from all corners as commanders issued their orders, and then followed by sounds of footsteps and the grinding of the armors. Guards lowered down the massive iron gate on the upper level as griffin cavalry rushed out from the iron gate, circling the fortress. The wizard tower was sending beams of light to the battlements, supplying the magic crystal cannons with the needed energy. The focused crystal began to glow in bright white light on the city wall.

Meanwhile, black smoke was gathering outside Fort Raven.

Black smoke was the embodiment of the power of Chaos in the south of the kingdom.

When the first bird-like monster formed out of the black smoke, it began to swoop at the city wall. Philip spat and cursed quietly every vulgar word he could think of, and then drew his weapon to greet the enemy.