The Record of Unusual Creatures

Although the size of the communication device was a little problematic for the giant to handle, the connection with Mimir was successfully established. The old giant was in the Athens Sanctuary busily overseeing the operations of the Shadow Council. Files were floating around Mimir and pens were writing on the papers. There was even a laptop with a pair of invisible hands typing on it. Obviously, Mimir was catching up with the times.

“Ahh, Hao Ren, I’m sorry to let you see such a mess here. I never thought that being a Council Leader could be so busy—” Mimir’s voice was heard saying. He choked when he saw the image of the three giant figures.

Actually, the figures did not look as huge in the eyes of the guardian giant. It was just that Hao Ren looked too small beside them. Mimir was wide-eyed, and he sounded confused, “Oh, oh… This is…”

“Your people,” said Hao Ren, moving to the front, so that Mimir could see him. “I have returned to the Plane of Dreams. They are the survivors that I told you earlier. This is Muru, Lemendusa, and Heve,” Hao Ren said.

Lemendusa took a deep breath as he looked at him in excitement. “Glad to see you alive, compatriot. You are a wise man and brother we respect. It’s a day worth celebrating! We salute you, wise guardian Mimir!”

Mimir appeared a little confused. “You know me?” he asked.

“Don’t forget, he has lost his memory,” Hao Ren said to the three giants.

A sense of sorrow flashed across Muru’s face. “You are a respectable man among us. Before the kingdom of God collapsed, you’ve always been our highly respected leader and brother,” he said.

Guardian giant was very different from normal creatures. Though they had male and female, they did not rely on the union of both sexes to reproduce but was born directly from the lifeblood. The endless sea of lifeblood on the Star of Creation was the seedbed of their race. This gave them unprecedented power and the closest resemblance to God and endowed them with a strange social relationship. The guardian giants had no traditional family structure such as parents and children. Instead, they were all brothers and sisters living together. They called the First Borns as their brothers.

Therefore, the three giants regarded Mimir as the elder brother as Mimir was a few million years older than them.

Mimir did not recognize these three giants who claimed to be his brothers and sister, but he felt a sense of geniality that he had never felt before. Their veins were flowing with the same blood though he did not know at this time. He blinked instead of nodding. “Though I don’t remember the world that you have mentioned, I am delighted to see my own people. Are there only three of you?”

“There’s Zorm too,” said Heve. “Oh, Zorm is a First Born. We gave him the name. Now there are only four guardian survivors in the universe. At least that’s what we know at the moment.”

Their first conversation did not go too deep, Mimir’s memory loss was an obstacle. Muru was talking about the ancient past of the Plane of Dreams, the goddess of creation, and the catastrophe and the reshaping of the ecosystem. Meanwhile, Mimir was talking about his 10,000 years of experience on Earth. They tried to strike up a common topic, but the gap between them was apparent.

They were strangers, at least in Mimir’s eyes.

They hung up. Hao Ren felt that he should say something. “Thing will become better. He’s different from other otherworldlings; he still has some vague memories left. Maybe his memory will come back one day when you talk to him more.”

“It doesn’t matter. At least we know Mimir has survived,” Lemendusa whispered. “Now let’s talk about the core you mentioned before. I once had the privilege of seeing the unfinished Creation Engine. Perhaps I could be of help.”

Hao Ren summoned the Petrachelys to release the engine core, which was suspended in the gravitational traction field of the Petrachelys. Maggie had already initialized the core, so now it was again in its wonderfully dynamic state. Hao Ren pointed at the ball and said, “This is the thing. I think it is only a part of it. I still need to build tracks on the spheroid. We have a blueprint of it.”

The golden giant ball instantly attracted the eyes ball of the three guardian giants. They could not help but stare at the mysterious sphere, which was something they had never seen before. The Creation Engine near the Star of Creation had not been completed, they had only seen the empty shell of the engine, and this core had been hidden away a long time ago.

Even so, Lemendusa was quite sure that this was indeed part of the Creation Engine: its design and operation were precisely the same as the Creation Engine as he remembered.

“You should finish it!” Muru said with a serious tone of voice. “Mother was doing everything she could to protect the world. We must complete her work!”

“I can help,” said Lemendusa. “I used to supervise the manufacture of the components of the Creation Engine in the factory in the Gate of Solenne. I know what it takes. Just give me the blueprint. I can help you.”

At first, Hao Ren had thought about using CARS’ materializer, which could convert virtual images into objects. But since Lemendusa had offered to help, he had no reason not to accept the offer. The materializer might be omnipotent, but it could only rigidly follow the blueprint to synthesize the subject, and it may not be necessarily 100 % suitable for the mysterious Creation Engine. After all, the goddess of creation was a deity born in the wild, the blueprint she left behind would not be based on the standards of the three celestial systems. The first hurdle was the compatibility of the design with the CARS system. Lemendusa would be a better choice as he had experience in the manufacturing of the Creation Engine.

The building of the Creation Engine, more specifically, the construction of the core had been finalized. Hao Ren had determined the location of the factory.

He decided to return to the Gate of Solenne to build this divine artifact.

The Gate of Solenne, the gateway to the goddess of creation in the past, had been entirely destroyed by the deicidal war. The galaxy had fallen into the Umbral Realm during the explosion of the Star of Creation, but for some unexplained reasons, it mysteriously reappeared in the primary material world not long ago. This was also where Hao Ren rescued Lemendusa and Heve from Solenne Prime.

Today, the galaxy was an inhabitable zone. Charred continents, torn planets, and seas of celestial debris, as well as radioactive clouds, formed the death zone. Even starlight from a distance was deflected near the Gate of Solenne. The space around here was unstable. The crack at the border of the nebula was like a dangerous ditch that swallowed everything that came near it.

Hao Ren had chosen to set up a factory to produce the engine core here. There was a reason for this: this was the closest location in the primary material world to the Umbral Realm. In theory, it was also near to the unfinished engine body. Though he had not found the way to the Umbral Realm, he felt that the Gate of Solenne was the best bet.

There was another important reason why he chose this location. According to Lemendusa, some critical components of the Creation Engine needed to be cast in the core of a death star. While Hao Ren thought that the plant in CARS could simulate the same environment, for the sake of safety, he decided to follow the standards set by the goddess of creation.

After all, the divine artifact was a mysterious object. It not only required the high temperature and pressure in the core of death star for fusion to take place to make the engine core, but death star itself might have some symbolic meaning.

There was nothing left at the Gate of Solenne except dying stars.