The Record of Unusual Creatures

“Calling you?” Hao Ren’s brow ticked as he heard what Vivian said. “A voice?”

“Not sure,” Vivian’s sight hovered around the massive hulk of metal. “It was a flash of a moment thing, like someone reminding me that I need to look there… but there’s nothing now.”

A thought had appeared just in a flash in one’s mind, that got Hao Ren thinking. “The divine artifact, it seems like there’s some truth to it.”

There were not many things that could give Vivian such an odd reaction, and something that the Goddess of Creation had left behind would probably do the trick. The denizens of the ark have a legend about a divine artifact protecting the world, and now Vivian had this unusual sensation while standing beside the Furnace of the Ancestors, it was natural to link this two incidents together. It does seem like the exiled arks had been given some sort of protection… and it came from the Goddess herself?!

Willy did not understand what the two were on about and asked out of curiosity. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re a local, do you know how to enter the Furnace of the Ancestors?” Hao Ren went straight to the point.

“A local? I’m not a local. I’m from Hearthfire…” Willy just responded to the first half of the question by reflex before recovering. “The Furnace of the Ancestors? You want to go into it?”

“We can’t?” Nangong Sanba’s eyebrow rose. “Aren’t we here to fix that problem?”

Willy’s expression turned from confused to horrified. He had a lot of guesses abou this group of outlanders, but he never thought that they would actually want to enter the Furnace itself to investigate. “That’s inconceivable! The Furnace is a place where only the dead could step into. I’ve never heard of any living person going into that place! A person steeping into the Furnace will be cursed by the power of the dead, and his body will go ablaze, skin will be flayed and his internals bleed before being turned into ash. And you want to go in there?!”

Hao Ren was rather surprised by what he heard. He never expected that reactor core to be that dangerous and he did not know it was a problem stemming from the legend itself, or the energy reactor itself have some sort of safety mechanism to ward off intruders. But he must go in there. “Are there no other ways?”

Willy shook his head wildly. “No way, no way! That’s suicide. Even the flallegants would not be able to break into the Furnace. There are Blood Wardens guarding the place. These soldiers have the right to even ignore the words of the kings. They only follow their orders and calling. What sort of madness is this that you want to go in there?”

The young lad was totally horrified by Hao Ren’s plans and after trying to talk Hao Ren out of it a suspicious look started appearing on his face as he looked at the seemingly calm Lily and Vivian. The boy suddenly remembered that this group knew ‘sorcery’ and some chilling legends of yore. Willy started shivering in fear. “Wha…What are you all planning to do?”

“Relax, boy.” A red glow shone from Vivian’s eye and through the use of blood magic she forced the body to calm down. Her voice was slow, and had a magical property to it. “Don’t you want to stop the coming of winter? Have a look at the Furnace yourself… it’s damaged, very badly damaged. And we know how to fix it. That’s what we are here for.”

There was a couple of spells within Vivian’s blood magic repetoire that could be used against the human psyche, but Willy was someone who had no idea what magic was, and his will was weak, thus he fell under the calming effects without resistance. His eyes darkened a split moment. “But you cannot enter the Furnace of the Ancesotrs, it has the power of the dead there, the Blood Wardens will also not…”

“Then what does your king expect to achieve in fixing the reactor’s probme by just summoning the scholars?” Lily asked. “Since they don’t know how to fix it from outside, nor they are allowed inside. Are they supposed to just stand and watch?”

Willy started blaberring a whole load of nonsense, and it went from sorcery to the misinterpretation of technical terms. It sounded like a whole load of hogwash with a bit of leaving it to fate. But asking him was moot in the first place, Hao Ren knew that no one in this world would have the knowledge to fix the reactor, and it seems like many times in the past when the reactor shuts down, the scholars will gather around the ancient circuit diagrams and circuitry boards to sing litanies of praise and respect, but in the end the denizens were still reliant on the arks’ resililent self-repairing system to survive winter. And yet this time around, there was a kilometer long rent on the shell of the reactor, and this was not something a reboot would fix.

Hao Ren had planned to have Willy and Master Orrow lead the way, and then find an opportunity to walk past the guards into the internals of the reactor. That would avoid the need for conflict and any unforseen accidents, but now the local’s knowledge of the Furnace of the Ancestors had regressed so badly that it was best if they broke into the reactor themselves.

“Go and find a place to rest. We still have things to do.” Hao Ren patted Willy on the shoulder and motioned for the young man to leave after learning more about the Blood Wardens. With that, Hao Ren turned towards a side of the royal city wall. He wanted to scout the lay of the land, and thought that the rent itself was an entry into the reactor proper. “Lets go have a look.”

The group then walked through the busy street towards the rent.

The area was still prosperous despite a terrifying explosion had just occurred here. Everyone would have seen thew reactor blew up in close proximity, but yet the city was as vibrant as usual. The denizens of this world had gotten used to their world going haywire from time to time, and while the rent on the Furnace of the Ancestors was unprecedented, and as the sanctuary’s back-up power supply kicked in, the civilians had calmed down. Everyone was talking about the explosion, and some even tried use some bizzare legends to explain the phenomenon, with the optimists and pessiments gathering around to listen. But everyones’ actions were the same: Huddling together, have a lively chat, and using words to dispel the brooding atmosphere.

Of course, the actual damage caused by the explosion itself could not be overlooked. As the electrical fire ripped through the reactor’s shell, some of the broken pieces had blown outwards. These debries, following the direction of the artificial gravity then fell onto the edge of the city, destroying some houses. The following electrical fault also caused a series of small fires and the scene of chaos was visible in the royal city. Soldiers and labourers were busy cleaning up the damaged areas and the closer the place was towards the Furnace the more pronounced the damage was.

Thanks to the chaotic social order and the chaos wrought by the damage done to the area, Hao Ren and the rest managed to slip through every road without attracting attention. They finally arrived at a special exit near the edge of the royal city. And just as Hao Ren had predicted, after the exit was a highland, and from the exit the entrance to the Furnace was visible at a distance.

But the entrance to the facility was indeed heavily guarded. A few oddly shaped soldiers stood guard there. They wore simple leather armor with the upper torso exposed to the cold weather. They seemed rather unperturbed by the chilly temperature. Their skin were pallid but they were unusually muscular and veins and blood vessels were visible in their almost translucent skin, looking almost like a line of red tattos. The soldiers patrolled the entrance to the reactor and led out an unintelligible growl from time to time, it sounded more beast than human and when they spoke, drool ran across the length of their mouth and down to the floor.

“This are the Blood Wardens Willy talked about?” Hao Ren muttered to himself.

“…. Radiation sickness.” The MDT slipped out of Hao Ren’s pocket. A glint appeared on its shell, and after scanning the facility behind the soldiers it finally understood why. “I forgot to scan the area’s radioactive levels…. There’s a leakage from the reactor and the radiation levels behind the metal wall is frankly terrifying, and these soldiers had stood guard a place where only a wall stood between them and the radiation, all of them are chronically ill now!”

The Blood Wardens, the chosen to guard the Furnace of the Ancestors, they were the strongest warriors chosen from all four nations. The bravest , the fiercest of young warriors.These soldiers have eternal orders to guard the entrance of the Furnace, and as their body basked in the light of the god, they had obtained some unusual characteristics. Their lives may be short, but it was a glorious one. That was how the locals see the Blood Wardens, but the truth was, these were just poor souls with radiation sickness. Their biggest combat strength was the radiation burns on their skin, as no normal person in the wrold would dare to go toe to toe with someone looking like this.

“They’ve chosen the strongest, the healthiest of people to guard this place, but in truth they are wasting precious labour strength in this radiation.” Lily’s eyes widen. “This… this is…just illogical.”

“During the dark days of the Black Death, people were busy burning women who knew how to make medicine out of herbs to supposedly stop the spread of the plague.” Vivian said with a blank look. “But the guards were is a necessity. The reactor behind them is no place a living person should go to. No matter what the person who first discovered this had thought, locking the place down was the right thing to do.