The Record of Unusual Creatures

Ravaged by the demon hunters, the degree of devastation in the underworld was shockingly terrible.

The place was initially already desolate with eternal night shrouding the world for thousands of years. Poisonous water and lava flowed across the dark and cracked earth. The undead was everywhere, and life would end there. After the demon hunters raided and killed Hades, which guarded the place, the war left behind even more scars on the land. Powerful magic energy had torn and twisted the earth, which was already covered in cracks in the first place, so much so that it had formed into an undulating landscape. In between the ridges were horrible rifts, which bored through the entire underworld. Anything that fell into the cracks would drop right into the dimensional boundary and be shredded by the artificial dimension. The demon hunters had killed most of the undead creatures wandering in the underworld. There were shattered massive skeletons and flesh and blood residue everywhere. The outposts and guard towers used to monitor how the dimension destroyed when the demon hunters’ Sacred Flame melted thought down to be indestructible structures like butter.

Hao Ren and his team threaded the underworld carefully. It was now unstable. Hasse played the role of a guide by relying on his memories of the place. They had to circumvent the cracks that suddenly popped up from the earth. As the foundation of the dimension was collapsing, the land followed suit. Hessiana tried to fly instead of walk, but it turned out to be even more dangerous. The soul furnace of Tartarus had shut down, and the human souls collected by Hades had escaped. But these unburned, mindless souls were now floating in the air en masse, forming a strong energy field. Anyone flying too close to this energy field could cause a chain explosion and be polluted by the negative emotions in these souls. Compared with the soul-occupied sky, the crack-filled earth seemed to be a safer option.

After threading in the underworld for a distance, the group finally came to a dry riverbed.

Hao Ren stood on the edge of the riverbank, casting his sight across the darkness on the sloping land on the other side of the river.

He looked back down at the riverbed, which had only dried up not long ago. There was still stinking venom and mud on the riverbank, and the cause of the river drying up was plain to see: the riverbed had cracked open. Water had flowed into the cracks and straight through the underworld before disappeared into the turbulent boundary of the dimension.

Because of those breaches in the riverbed, Hao Ren and his entourage had to walk along the river bank and find a safe route that allowed them to cross to the other side. They were fortunate to be here not too late as the dimensional collapse was still in its early stage. It did not take them too long to finally find a safe crossing point, where they saw a strange boat stranded on the river beach.

It was a ferry built with fishing nets and bones of unknown creatures. The boat was full of fist-sized holes and cracks, even at the bottom of the hull. It was hard to imagine how the boat could float on water. On the bow of the boat, there was an ugly giant, three meters in height, wearing a tattered black robe but his body festered. The skin on his face had peeled off, and it was extremely horrible. The giant had a pole in his right hand with spikes on one end and one his left hand was a broken lamp. There was a silver sword with a sacred flame still burning penetrated his chest and nailed him to his boat.

It was the ferryman of Hades, Charon.

“So this is Charon?” Hessiana looked quietly at the dead ferryman for a while. Suddenly, a sarcastic smile spread across her face as she fished out two pennies from her pocket and placed them on the opened eyes of Charon. “It seems like you have finally fetched yourself across the river.”

A slight shock seemed to have disturbed the balance of the ship, which had long been decaying and only held up by magic. The boat, made of white bones and fishing nets, crumbled to the ground. Gold coins fell out of the crumbling boat and paved a path on the riverbed. Bones were also in the mix—they were also part of Charon’s collection.

As Charon’s decayed body fell on the beach and shattered, an uncountable amount of gold coins fell out of his skin.

Hao Ren and Lily’s jaws dropped to the ground. But Hasse’s face was emotionless—ahh, he was already face-paralyzed in the first place.

But Hessiana did not show any reactions.

“Oh, Charon, I know him.” Hessiana shrugged. “He might have been dead since I was little, but I have lived through the Mythological Era and gone through a lot; he was like a typically brutal and distorted god.”

Hasse shook his head and walked down to the riverbed. “Let’s go. The path is ready.”

One would wonder how long it took Charon to accumulate this wealth. Perhaps the oldest coins could be traced back to the beginning of ancient Greek civilization. From the day when the gods on Mount Olympus set the rules for life and death, the Mediterranean people used these coins as funerary goods out of fear and awe. It was an offering to the ruler of the underworld to seek peace for the soul of the dead. Charon might have taken a small part of these offerings but was enough to fill his boat and his entire skin.

Now the money for passage paid by the mortals had formed a path after the destruction of the underworld.

After crossing the dry river—the River of Suffering, Hao Ren saw Elysium aka Elysian Fields. This vast garden was the blessed place in the underworld according to the myths and legends of the humans. But Hasse told of the truth about this place.

“This garden used to be lush, and it looks so. But it is anything but a blessed place. When the Olympians failed in their underworld plan, they could not bear to see their effort to go to the dogs. So the gods transplanted some magical plants into the ‘blessed place.’ But these plants, initially unsuitable for growing in the normal environment and having more to do with the Undead Spells and dark forces, thrived in this environment. Persephone was the gardener who cared for this horror garden. She detained those human souls who enter the underworld but were not suitable as fuels and let them wander in the garden. Unknowing to the human souls, they became the fertilizer for the magical plants—Mournbell and Carrion, the two types of flowers that had a strong hallucinogenic effect on the soul. So these souls could not feel the pain while the nursery absorbed them. They not only did not feel the pain, but they continued to think that they were in paradise until the moment their souls dissipated entirely.”

“I know what the Mythological Era is all about.” Hao Ren looked at the Elysium, which had completely withered. The war-level magic spells of the demon hunters had burned the garden to the ground. What was left were only scorched earth and bushes billowing in smoke, and human bone fragments scattered around. Many of these bones were originally buried under the nursery as fertilizer. But the shockwaves on the battlefield had rolled them out of the ground. “But seeing is believing—it is really dark.”

Lily wrinkled her nose and said, “Was there any good man… err I mean otherworldling in Mythological Era?”

“Of course, there were: on the solar ship of Ra, in the palace of Asgard, on Mount Olympus, and even Zeus himself seemed to have proposed several policies to treat humans better. But what difference did they make?” Hessiana said with her arms folded. “Humans were still captive. I am not a human, but I cannot stand to see how one race enslaved and exploited the other. This social structure has not been a good form of existence from the beginning.”

Hao Ren was impressed.

The area where the group had traveled from was only the periphery of the underworld. The real underworld was where Hao Ren and his team stood now. The underworld consisted of two parts; one was the Elysium, and the other was the famous Tartarus. The dry moat outside Tartarus and Elysium was the Sty, which was regarded as the border of the world of the dead. Inside the border was the real underworld while outside the boundary was the wasteland that the gods of Olympus had abandoned.

For many years, Hades had concentrated his effort in the inner layers of the underworld and let the mutant monsters roam freely on the wasteland on the other side of the Styx.

Therefore, the remnant powers of Hades still worked in Tartarus.

Elysium and Tartarus were adjacent to each other. When emerging from the withered garden, the layered landscape of Tarturus covered in mud and volcanic ash would be within view. There was only one fortress in the scorched land. The fort stood in the darkness, had three layers of pure copper walls. It was so intimidating tall that it could strike a sense of helplessness in the heart of human forces.

In the middle of the fortress was to where Hao Ren was going.

A tower that always revolved and reorganized itself and that looked like it was stitched together by many metal parts. Ithe bottom of the tower was connected to the temple of the underworld, and the top of the tower rose into the chaotic sky, linking the Temple of Hades on Mount Olympus.

But it was no easy feat to go to the brass fortress at the highest point of Tartarus because the power of Hades had not completely dissipated. The land outside the fort was full of undead.