The Record of Unusual Creatures

The three little sprites replied so matter-of-factly that Hao Ren did not know how to react.

“We have no idea how to go back! We plunged into space turbulence and drifted all the way here!”

“The navigation computer has long been damaged. We do not know how to use it even if it is not damaged.”

“Nonsense! We all know how to operate it. Only you who have no clue!”

“Whatever, but we just do not know where the battlefield is.”

The three sprites gibbered incessantly. But Hao Ren had somewhat adapted to their rhythm and could now sort out the essential parts of their conversation. This time it was a simple clue.

The planetary fortress on where the sprites lived exploded on the battlefield. The space turbulence generated by the explosion threw the celestial debris into distant space. The navigation computer of the battleship was also damaged in the blast. Now, this planetary wreckage drifted aimlessly in space as it had no power and navigation. And the sprites could not find the way to return.

The sprites were born from the resonant crystal, but they seemed to lack the ability to find the parent star by tracing the resonant signal.

Something suddenly crossed Hao Ren’s mind. “How did those bad guys find you?”

“They could track the resonant signal!” The youngest of the three sprites jumped up and down before Hao Ren, her hair dancing with electric arcs as she was in excitement, and her mouth crackling in sparks as she spoke. “They wanted to destroy the crystals, the core that the goddess created.”

Hao Ren’s heart missed a beat. “The core?”

“It is the Destiny Core!” said the boy sprite with short hair. “It was where we were born.”

“The crystal that you have mentioned are aplenty there.”

“The lightning of the goddess has never stopped.”

“Our fellow sprites are born from that crystal every day!”

“Over half of the sprites live in the core!”

“That is the crystal planet we are looking for!” Hao Ren was excited, but then he looked disheartened again. “Forget it, you cannot find the way home anyway. I am curious; while those festered monsters could find you by tracking the signal, why did you sprites who were born from the crystal not have this ability?”

The long-haired little sprite looked vexed. “We should have that ability, but we have no queen. Sprites cannot do anything without a queen.”

“That it is! That it is! Only when the queen is on the throne, the sprites could use their ability!”

“And only the queen can let the sprites know what they should do!”

“Ahh! I have found my psionic regulator! This time, it hangs on my waist.”

Hao Ren was a little baffled now. “But you just said that you don’t have a queen.”

“Yes, yes, we don’t have a queen.”

“But sprites should have a queen! She just has not appeared yet!”

“The goddess once said we had a queen!”

“I think this is the legacy of the schizophrenic goddess of creation,” Vivian whispered to Hao Ren. “These sprites are probably the ‘unfinished products.’ Perhaps the goddess of creation did not manage to complete the last step while creating them.”

“I have the same thought too.” Hao Ren frowned as he nodded gently.

Just then, the MDT suddenly spoke as it floated up before the three sprites, “After listening to what you all have just said, the navigation computer is damaged, not lost. Did you mean the navigation computer of the Naqdal is on this planetary fragment?”

“Yes! Yes! The control center is here!”

“The doomsday weapon is also installed on this continent.”

“But the weapon was torn in half during the explosion. And the only thing left is the pedestal.”

“But the navigation computer is still intact!”

“Although it is broken!”

Hao Ren got the meaning of the MDT. “You could not fix it, but we may. Can you take us to the navigation computer?”

The three sprites nodded in unison. “Okay, okay!”

The control center of the planetary fortress was not far from where they were now. They could already see it once they got out of the great temple where the sprites lived. It stood quietly at the end of the great plains as if it was a black sword pointing to the sky.

But the towering temple was only part of the control center structure that was exposed on the surface. A planetary fortress certainly would not let its critical facility lie on the surface where it was vulnerable to attack. Beneath the temple, it was a shaft of hundreds of kilometers deep, protected by layers of armored walls. After passing through these insanely thick protective layers, they would arrive at the location of the navigation computer.

The old transport system was unusable due to stratigraphic dislocation and lack of power supply. But the critical facility like this had multiple backup systems, so there were still some lightings along the way. When looking down the shaft, the intermittent faint light looked as if fireflies stretching into the deepest darkness.

Vivian spread her wings and flew down the shaft with Hao Ren with the three sprites leading the way. The shimmer on the sprites provided additional light to illuminate the dark sections so that Hao Ren and Vivian could see even more clearly the surroundings with their night vision ability.

Most parts of the shaft remained intact. Some sections had signs of fracture and tilting. In some of the most severely dislocated sections, a large section had broken off and shifted up to 100 meters. Rocks almost blocked off the entire section, leaving only a few narrow gaps and holes large enough for the sprites to pass through, but not Hao Ren. So, in this case, he had to dig through the rock using his cutting laser before he could continue his journey.

After the deep vertical tunnel, they came to the control center of the Naqdal planetary battleship. It was a hexagonal column-shaped chamber.

“This is the control center!” The long hair sprite flew around, explaining proudly. “It used to be a lively place from where the guardian giants commanding the battle campaigns, and the sprites helped out with the equipment.”

“But now it has been abandoned.”

“Even if you can fix it, Naqdal would not be able to fly; the engine is gone.”

“The energy reactor is gone too!”

“Same goes the weapon system!”

“But we will still come here partying or something, occasionally.”

The control center was dead silent. The hum of the instrument and people’s voices were no more. From the scale of the chamber to the equipment specially designed for the guardian giants, Hao Ren could still imagine how awesome and busy this place once was. The hexagonal chamber had several platforms of varying heights, each of which was large enough to build a house on it. There were also control units of about seven-meter-high and chair in the same proportion on the platforms. The entire chamber was as if a giant kingdom in the fairy tale. Indeed, this was the place of the giants.

The average height of the guardian giants was more than ten meters, and facilities here were built to proportion.

The guardian giants who fought here were all killed during the great destruction of Naqdal. But the sprites escaped the most horrible moment by their unique life form and relying on the crystal in the fortress. In the following thousands of years, the sprites collected the remains of the guardian giants from all over the continent as well as from the control center and buried them on the grasslands.

After the burying the giants, the sprites rarely returned to the control center, because there was nothing left in there, and the green mountains and rivers on the surface were far more attractive. But on some special occasions, when the sprites suddenly thought of the past, they would come back here to commemorate their former comrades.

The control center was not wholly dark. Hao Ren looked around and found some faint light sources in the corners. He listened intently and heard some subtle hums coming from under the floor, or maybe behind the wall.

Apparently, there was some backup power that still worked.

Broken but not dead; as a super battleship built on the foundation of a planet, the Naqdal had multiple backup systems and modules. These subsystems had guaranteed that even when the spaceship broke apart, its wreckages would still be operational and even maintain a certain level of combat capability.

“Where is the navigation computer? Or where is its interface?” Hao Ren looked around the chamber and found no apparent things that looked like a computer.

“There!” The smallest sprite flew into the air and pointed to the above. “It is there!”

Hao Ren looked up and saw a vast dome, the structure of which made him dizzy by just looking at it. His heart missed a beat. Apparently, the most critical system was right above.

Multiple massive alloy skeletons intertwined at the top of the hexagonal columnar chamber, forming a nest-like structure. Conduits and cables ran over and around these skeletons like veins, and all these things would eventually converge into one place, which was the crystal.

A metal structure held the large crystal solidly in place. The crystal had a similar texture to that of the resonant crystals. But, unlike the regular resonant crystals, this ‘heart’ lacked the luster.

For the first time, Hao Ren saw a resonant crystal that was dim and did not resonate with other resonant crystals. A thought came to his mind.

Every resonant crystal had life. But this crystal above the chamber… was dead.