The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren and his team had just landed on L’Haronne for a couple of days, and due to them being trapped within the atmosphere, most of Nolan’s planetary observation devices could not be deployed. That left them with little information about the planet. The moldy tomes were full of inaccurate corrections and ambiguous annotations. Even the information gathered by Nolan’s probes could not give them a lot of valuable details, so when faced with a sudden “natural disaster”, Hao Ren was totally out of his depths.

However, he was a hundred percent sure that L’Haronne was facing grave danger. It happened just as Hao Ren was about to lead the team into the area. The timing was almost per-determined.

This reminded him of his talent as a “trouble magnet”, and while that was just a random jest by Raven 12345, he had to take it seriously despite how preposterous it may have sounded.

That aside, he immediately started focusing on the possible reasons for the “timed” apocalyptic disasters.

While a “trouble magnet” was a plausible explanation, that did not provide any further context, and Hao Ren believed that every event had an underlying rule or reason. Even Raven 12345’s nonsensical proclamations were based on a very complex meta-mathematical model and her appointment letter. So, the sixteen massive rifts upon L’Haronne’s continents had a reason behind them. Yet, they had chosen such timing to come apart. He was leading the expedition and had used Noobie as an exploit to scout what was within the Great Pit. That made him think that these things were all connected.

As a proper inspector, he would be remiss to ignore any possible, however minute sources of information.

So… could this incident have to do with the Great Pit?

The cracks on the planet’s surface did not directly lead to the Great Pit, and he noticed that the Pit itself was not affected while he was at the subterranean place when the disaster broke out. But the timings of these two incidents were too close, and this led Hao Ren to that particular line of thought. Did Noobie’s carriage of the probe cause the changes on the planet’s surface? Or…

The act of scouting itself had triggered a mechanism deep within the planet…

All these questions flashed passed Hao Ren’s mind, but he did not have the luxury to delve deeper into them as he had an even more pressing situation at hand. The “flaming people” coming out from the cracks were converging on the human (and non-human) settlements like moths to the flames.

He had to do something.

“Nolan, can you destroy the monsters?”

“Yes,” Nolan replied affirmatively, “But that will take the entire plains together with it. Boss, I’m inside the atmosphere and for a starship, this distance is still as good as being glued to the planet’s surface. And my weapon systems are meant for space battles. Firing at this distance at the surface will unquestionably destroy everything within the area. Even at the smallest output.”

Hao Ren too was aware of that. Nolan was a starship, and while she was categorized by the Xi Ling Celestials as a “civilian-class frigate”, most of the frigates used by the gods were still overpowered when compared with the stuff mortals had. This was an official duty frigate, and the firepower design concept was made so that an inspector would have enough firepower to take out anything threatening during a mission across worlds. And the things that could threaten an inspector were few and far between in the universe.

They usually needed hundreds of meters of thick advanced armor and barriers of similar strength to even warrant Nolan firing a shot.

For a weapon that was capable of taking care of such a scenario, a wide unshielded plain at almost contact-level… That time back in Holletta, Hao Ren used one of the ship’s sub-cannons at the lowest output in high orbit, and that wiped out the entire Beinz Diocese.

“Send out the droids and combat drones from the hangar. Let them defend against the monsters.” Hao Ren commanded. “As long as possible.”

“How about the stealth protocol?”

“The ship stays in stealth mode.” Hao Ren swiftly replied. “Nothing can be done for those combat drones. But now that a swarm of flaming monsters have clambered up from the deep, a swarm of allied UFOs won’t make much of a difference. You’d get numb by the information overload anyway, so let this world’s experts and scholars crack their heads for once.”

“Understood. Also, do we start signal transmission?”

When Nolan brought that up, Hao Ren had to seriously consider his options.

A large scale battle had indeed happened, and the hostilities on the planet’s surface were beyond his team’s firepower. Based on the plan earlier, this was the time to broadcast the signal, yet the problem was that L’Haronne was totally different from the Umbral Realm they had imagined.

He had forecasted the Umbral Realm would be a broken dimension with plenty of floating celestial debris, and even if he was to land on a larger celestial body, he could go to a clear area to deploy the warp gate, and the droid army and the guardian fleet was reinforcements meant for space combat.

No one expected the expedition team to end up within a planet’s atmosphere.

A signal arrow, and a massive army was at his command, This was true, but where would he station them? Hao Ren considered the thickness of the atmosphere and reckoned he could find somewhere to stuff Salaman’s fleet in, after taking out their antenna arrays and sail-like energy conduit he could probably make some space, but he figured that Salaman won’t be too happy about this. As for the droid swarm…. there was simply no space, even if he was to get the help of an organization expert.

While he could hope that the warping-in fleet would for some unknown safety reason be “expelled” to the outer orbit and become the “lucky ones” to go beyond the planet’, Hao Ren did not intend to go all-in with his reputation. Normally speaking, after learning how the goddess rolled, Hao Ren felt that he did not have much reputation to uphold anyway…

It did not sit right with Hao Ren that he had an armada of starships and soldiers at standby on the outside, while the planet he was on was suffering a disaster. Having a change of heart he asked Nolan, “I remember that there is a spare band in the navigation signal transmission for emergencies and unexpected incidents. I think that can be used now.”

This was a precaution, and now it seemed this caution was warranted.

“We do have such a device, but the data that we can send out is very limited.” Nolan replied, “Due to the nature of the Umbral Realm, the navigation marker transmission is a very intricate process, and does not have any spare bandwidth for us to leave a message. Any messages we manage to squeeze in would not be sufficient to explain the bizarre situation of this bizarre world…”

“Salaman is a soldier, and the droids are weapons. Following orders is their nature, so we don’t need to go into detail,” Hao Ren said. “Just leave these words: The fleet stays, deploy ground troops.”

“Understood.”

After making the necessary arrangements regarding the broadcast transmission, Hao Ren calmed down a little and now it was time to make their way back to White Maple Leaf city at the soonest. While they could not be everywhere, helping a city to defend against the monsters were something they could do.

They had gone there by horse for two days and two nights, but there were no such emergencies back then. Given the situation, he could not afford to use this sort of leisurely means of transportation.

And the first thing that came to mind was the MDT’s teleportation ability.

Hao Ren believed that under such circumstances Rheia would not question why these “downtrodden adventurers” would have the very valuable ability to perform a group teleportation.

Yet the MDT responses threw a bomb into his plans. “Partner, unable to activate teleportation.”

“What?” Hao Ren was shocked. “Your teleportation ability is also locked?”

He then remembered the same ‘lockdown’ keeping Nolan from leaving the atmosphere.

The MDT replied through the mental link, “Seems like it. While I managed to get the marker, but when I activate the teleportation module I realize that this marker cannot be transported into real space. Seems like this ‘lockdown’ had existed since the beginning. Just that we did not notice it because we haven’t been using any teleportation since we arrived.”

The MDT’s short-range teleportation was inhibited, and the first thing Hao Ren thought off was Nolan’s warp engine. Could that be inhibited as well? Nolan had only partially activated the engine when she tested it out, and there is a possibility that the inhibition may affect the Petrachelys’ engine!

Being stuck within the atmosphere, and unable to activate teleportation, things were getting bad to worse.

And the worst was just right behind.

As Hao Ren thought the situation was bad, Nolan reported another situation that threw a spanner into everything. “Boss, there is no response to the transmission.”

“HAH?!”

“Reason unknown, but there are no responses to the transmission, and I have not detected any dimensional tunnel being created. Initial prediction is that the signal did not manage to pierce through the Umbral Realm.”

Hao Ren suddenly had the urge to scream. “F*ck my life… Should have consulted the yellow calendar before we left. These two days have just been unsuited for work!”

One could only go upward once one hit rock bottom, and good news soon came as Nolan reported the situation of the war, “Boss, the monsters from the rifts have already attacked the human cities, but the local’s reaction had been swift. They have activated their city-wide barriers and their armies are organizing a defense.”

Hao Ren had accepted the fact that the navigation markers were not working, and was starting to work out the possible cause and solutions. As he heard Nolan’s report he’s brows furrowed, while he followed his team towards the outer edge of the Black Forest he asked via the mental link. “What you think of their combat capabilities?”

“I think that is not a worry for now.” Nolan seemed to have heaved a sigh of relief. “While the disaster was sudden, but the denizens of this planet does not seem to be unused to battle. And the monsters from the rift are not invincible. The defense mounted by the locals is coming into effect. It doesn’t seem like they will crumble without our help. Of course, that depends on the rifts not doing anything funny.”

Hao Ren also breathed a sigh of relief as he heard Nolan’s report.

Things had already happened, and as it seemed like the L’Harroneans were capable of holding the fort, he did not need to be that nervous anymore.

But they still need to get back as soon as possible, they could accomplish nothing by staying in this already burning the Black Forest.

The group had reached the edge of the forest and Nangong Sanba quickly followed his runic senses to where they had left their horses. Yet the poor animals were all dead.

A small rift had formed in the area and the flames and smoke from the rift effortlessly slain these normal horses, and on a few trees nearby, the runes Nangong Sanba had left behind were extinguished.

These runes were meant to ward off beasts and weak monsters, and the place cracking part was clearly beyond their function.

There were still light and thick smog coming out of the rift, and Rheia gripped her staff tightly. “What’s… going on?”

“No matter what, we need to solve the problem before us now.” Hao Ren said with a frown, and at the direction he was looking at, a few flaming humanoids were slowly converging towards them.