The Record of Unusual Creatures

A painful roar rang as a sabertooth fell lifelessly on the ground. Its fear-inspiring fangs, speed, and ferocious attack did nothing for it. The ancient apex predator did not even understand how it got hurt when its heart was burnt to crisps in an instant by the plasma spear.

Hao Ren swung his plasma spear to the side, and even though the blade itself was not coated with blood, Hao Ren felt that the motion was a plus in the cool factor. After he looked at his surroundings, he confirmed that aside from the overly-eager sabertooth earlier, there were no more hostile parties in the area. He breathed a sigh of relief.

The ancient wilderness was teeming with danger, and humans in this age had not climbed to the top of the food chain yet. There were beasts that could prey on humans everywhere, and while they were no threat to Hao Ren, getting rid of them was still quite the headache.

Hao Ren turned back and saw a distortion rift about two-persons wide hanging in the air. On the opposite side of the rift, the mysterious tower of ice lay on the ground, and the scenery of 7,715 BC was captured within the rift and was covered by a shade of grey that came with the time stop.

To be frank, Hao Ren had no idea which year he had ended up in his backtrack through time, the precise date is probably only available in the sandbox system logs. What he had was an instinct, a sense of premonition that was getting clearer the closer he was to the starting point of this time warp. He now knew that he was in the final frontier, perhaps here, or the next one, he would arrive at the starting point of this long time stream. The end of this long journey… was not too far away.

“So… the sabretooth actually lived till this age huh…” Hao Ren looked at the fallen beast before him as he mumbled to himself. “Archaeologist will probably faint of joy if they see this…”

He was not all that interested in the sabretooth but he needed something to talk about. In this foreboding prehistoric world, traveling alone was not something fun, and Hao Ren realized that he needed to find something to distract himself.

As he left the dimensional rift behind him, Hao Ren lifted his plasma spear and left.

He continued moving across the frigid plain as he tried to find traces of settlements or any activities of intelligent beings, but he was unlucky throughout the day. This was Earth in its prehistoric days, and humans were in the stone age, and the small population of men all lived in the sparse and scattered settlements in the hospitable zones while the rest of the lands were wildlands. This ice age too had prevented humans from expanding their area of activity and to actually search for a settlement, it was all down to luck.

Hao Ren already knew of this and was not dejected. From the date he started going back in time, he had already run into all sorts of trials and tribulations, there was very little that could break him now.

As night fell, Hao Ren rested in a cave. The food items in his Dimensional Pocket had now become a rare luxury and were only eaten when he craved the “taste of home”. Instead, he hunted for meat in the plains, and after dinner, he used the stars to determine his position. And while the skies above were different 10,000 years ago, Hao Ren came prepared and had recorded the star maps of each era in his mind, and he could easily make out his current location: somewhere in northern Europe.

He then started studying Vivian’s diary and had a rough idea of his current location now and he was sure that he was close to his destination.

As the sun rises, he went forth again upon the vast grassland.

He was not moving without any destination however; he was following the “guide” within his inner self. While he was not very used to depending on his “instincts”, something so intangible to go about things, but he had to admit, as a demigod that has already linked with the will of the universe, his instinct was much much more reliable – at least compared to shoe or coin tossing – guide.

After entering this dimension, he felt that his instincts were more honed and pronounced. Simply closing his eyes and opening it again will tell him which way he should go, and this unseen guide was so clear, that he could hear a voice ringing in his head: It’s just ahead, the person he is looking for is just ahead.

Under this guidance, he continued through the wilderness. In this cold and barren Earth, only the rising sun and the starry night was his companion, and of course, those already extinct animals in the present day.

Mammoths or sabertooths were actually a rather rare sight, and in this post-ice age world, the climate was getting warmer, the change in the ecosystem had driven many glacial species on the path of extinction. While they still lasted a good few thousand years, but species’ decline was obvious. The scenes of men hunting mammoths were ending with the warmer climate, but the coming of the “Age of the Gods” was set to derail Earth’s original development path.

As the sun rose through the horizon for the twelfth time, Hao Ren had left the barren wilderness and entered grassland in warmer zone teeming with plans. He had run into a stone age settlement by the grassland. The tribespeople treated the god-like Hao Ren like a deity but they were clueless about Vivian or any other gods.

On the twentieth day, Hao Ren had crossed the grassland and into a mountainous area. He had not seen any otherworldling settlement along the way, like smashed landing vessels, antennas secured with rocks, or any purification magic circles near water sources or swamps. These were visible in the last track, even more so in an earlier one. They were proof of the otherworldlings’ efforts in survival and were all over the place during the starting years of the Age of Mythology.

Even the majestic Olympian pantheon had to start off by breaking stone off a mountain face.

Without these traces, there was only one explanation: He had arrived at a point much earlier than that, and even before the otherworldlings’ arrival on Earth!

This initially had Hao Ren at a loss, as he found it illogical: He was going through Vivian’s memory, and by theory, the earliest he would have arrived was at the point where Vivian had arrived on Earth, but he soon realized the cause.

This world was not created just from Vivian’s memories, or it is more accurate to state that Vivian’s memories were not the main “component” on this world; that was created by the mainframe’s sandbox system using simulation in order to create a replica of Earth, but yet, this Earth was different from the original.

Vivian’s memories only contained a few signposts and key scenes in this image-world. So, instead of these memories being the basis of the backtrack, it served more as a guiding tool.

At the top of a hill, Hao Ren finally stopped and set up a small camp on the flat ground upon the hill.

He knew where the problem lies. It was because he had dove too deep into this memory stream, even beyond Vivian’s knowledge. At this point, Vivian’s memory of this time was so murky that it was as good as nothing, and the sandbox system could not use this memory to pinpoint her location. Here, no one knew when the contact between the Surface World and the Plane of Dreams made contact, and Vivian’s memories did not contain anything either.

So the system could only toss him out to the closest possible point.

And by the looks of things, he was early to the party.

Hao Ren sat on a rock on top of the hill as he gazed into the green hills and grasslands before going into deep meditative thought. He wondered how early he had been, a few months perhaps, or a few years, or maybe decades. He could not tell from the stars or the plans around him the exact year he is in, but by the looks of things the ice age was over, and the glaciers were melting away from the warmer zones. The humans that survived the winter were starting to grow again, and the massive beasts which could not cope with the climate change and were weakened were now a valuable source of food for these prehistoric people.

Vivian’s earliest memories were when the glaciers had melted away.

It seems like he was not too early, and could only just wait.

Day 106, Hao Ren had finished scouting the perimeter, and his instincts rang strongly, calling him to return to his camp. As he sat cross-legged on the rock, he stabbed his plasma spear into the pile of pebbles around him.

He then used a divine art that he had rarely used and closed his eyes to wait.

He did not know how long had based, as time was a meaningless concept to him now. The sun rose and set, as the stars waxed and waned, cold wind blew day after day, bearing seeds at times, and these plants grew around him, before withering away…

His mind had entered a state of “silence”. He was aware of everything around him, but there he sat, with a deathly silence.

And one day, he suddenly opened his eyes as he gazed sharply into the distance.

The skies above the grassland roiled as the clouds tore open, and a continuous ocean lay upside down on the azure sky.

The time had come.