The Record of Unusual Creatures

The exploration team led by Hao Ren trudged on the scorched soil of Niebelungen, and along the way, they found a lot of bottomless chasms. The smallest of those terrible chasms were about hundreds of meters wide, and the deepest ones ran directly through the continent. Vivian threw a small bat into one of them, and 10 minutes later, she threw up. The little bat flew directly over the land of Niebelungen and crashed into the “back of the earth” with disordered gravity and horrifying landscapes.

Hao Ren had seen distorted rifts all over the earth in other spaces, but to be honest, the rifts in Niebelungen were different from those in other spaces.

The team stopped by a rather large rift and began to detect it. The widest part of the rift was about several kilometers, and its total length was up to 30 km. Its curve was like an ugly scar engraved on the ground. Deep in the fissure, they could vaguely see some huge, pillar-like cylindrical objects intertwined between the cliffs. Those entangled things shrouded in a toxic fog, and it was all hazy looking from above. Although Hao Ren could not see the details clearly, he knew that those were the vines of the First Born, Yggdrasil.

Galazur threw two probes down the rift. A moment later, they got the data. The dragon queen pointed at her MDT and said, “The geological data here is clearer, just as we speculated.”

Anthony took a closer look, nodded slightly, and said, “The earth was torn not by the explosion, but by the vines. The vines below have shown signs of very serious decay. There are a lot of friction marks and voids between them and the surrounding stone walls. This is evidence of the violent twisting and tearing of the rock layers by the vines. I guess that’s because of the intense pain.”

Hao Ren frowned and said, “Clear and accurate evidence of decay, but to be honest, there is a doubtful point in it.”

The other two immediately cast doubtful eyes at him.

“The vines found in other worlds are quiet, or we can say that, there is no sign of intense struggle around them,” Hao Ren explained, “but all the vines belong to the same creature. How can the vines in other areas remain motionless when such a serious mutation occurs in another place?”

Lily touched her chin, thought carefully and said, “It sounds like paralysis… Does the First Born have cerebral thrombosis?”

The MDT jumped out of nowhere and yelled, “I can have cerebral thrombosis, why can’t the First Born?”

Hao Ren hurried to pull down the distracting MDT. Galazur looked at him with concern and asked, “Seriously though, you really don’t want to send it back for repair? It’s still under warranty anyway.”

“If I sent it back, I have to get permission from my boss. Although it’s garrulous, it’s still quite useful. What if it gets worse after repairing? Forget it, let’s go on. The crater in front is where Nidhogg fell. Put all the data in order. Let’s go and see what’s there,” said Hao Ren.

Y’lisabet was dancing behind Vivian. The little girl was curious and asked, “What does Nidhogg look like?”

Vivian turned her head, glanced at Galazur and then asked, “Have you seen Aunt Dragon’s transformation?”

The little girl nodded her head vigorously. When she and her father were making a scene together on the upper platform, she saw the magnificent dragon crossing the sky. She remembered it vividly.

“Imagine Galazur turns into a dragon and falls into a sauce vat. That’s what Nidhogg looks like…” Vivian explained.

Galazur, “…”

No matter how insignificant the topics they had along the way, they did not delay the important work. Along the way, they collected energy readings from all the fissures in the earth and analyzed biological samples of more than a dozen vines spreading from them. With information from bats and probes flying everywhere, Hao Ren was able to sketch out a map of the contaminated and decayed area of Yggdrasil. Based on this area map, he could roughly calculate the boundary between the diseased vines and the normal vines and their distribution. The MDT uploaded the data to the analysis host on the Petrachelys, then transmitted a copy of the data to the Crapple Research Station via the spacecraft’s antennae.

Containers No.1 and No.2 of the research station immediately started a temporary thread and started checking the two First Born samples in the container to find out the possible internal causes of the decay.

At the same time, they arrived in front of the towering crater.

Hao Ren stood at the top of the crater, looked down, and saw a rather frightening sight.

The entire crater was like festering, perforated gangrene. The rocks and land in the crater had largely been corroded by highly toxic substances and the body fluids of the First Born, creating a bottomless deep pit. Countless huge, black-red glossy, semi-plant and semi-creature vines were entangled in this abyss, creating a complex situation. And at the center of the crater, a small hill was formed by a ball of finer vines. A hideous, twisted, huge skeleton was wrapped in the vines.

Nidhogg the Black Dragon, who withdrew from the battlefield of the Twilight of the Gods, fell at the end of the Earth, and finally died in the lair of Niebelungen. The First Born’s vines sucked up the once-powerful dragon and turned its bones into a terrible collection wrapped in vines.

“The activity of biological tissue here is higher than that of other regions, to a somewhat abnormal level…” Anthony took the Data Terminal to illuminate the bottom of the crater, slightly frowned and said, “Strange… Didn’t that Ymir say that he had calmed Yggdrasil down? Why do the vines here look completely active?”

“And so are the signs of infection and decay.” Hao Ren half squatted down to observe the weird vines below. The vines found in other worlds had a healthy luster with runes gleaming on the surface, but the vines in the crater were quite different in form from them. They looked more like turning into a different kind of biological tissue. “The vines of Niebelungen seem to be completely isolated from the vines elsewhere. It’s like a world of its own.”

“Is there a risk of ‘suddenly waking them up’?” Vivian looked at Anthony and asked.

“There’s definitely a risk, but it should be okay as long as we’re careful,” Anthony nodded and said, “and the activity is still below the alert level.”

“Everyone should be vigilant.” Hao Ren straightened his clothes and went down first. “When you see any active vines, you should report them first. Don’t rush to stimulate them.”

The terrain inside the crater was rugged and difficult to walk. They could not find a flat and open place to rest. The corroded earth was covered with potholes, and there was gas gushing out from time to time. Even Galazur and Anthony felt that the First Born was an extremely terrible and dangerous creature. They raised their guard and walked next to Hao Ren. Anthony was surrounded by magic runes of protection and warning. Galazur’s pupils had turned vertical, ready to transform.

At the back of the line, Nangong Wuyue created a mist enchantment to protect everyone. Although everyone had shields and a variety of defensive spells to protect them, the siren’s mist enchantment was still the best second protection in this case.

They came to the bones of Nidhogg.

“There are serious signs of corrosion,” Y’zaks said while moving his hand between the vines, easily breaking off a piece of dark bone. “Such a large dragon… It can basically dominate the whole vesicle space in my hometown.”

“It’s unfortunate to encounter such a creature. It can pierce through the nine worlds with just one tentacle,” said Hao Ren.

Lily looked up at the giant dragon skeleton, which was so huge that it almost covered the sky. “What a waste! If it weren’t poisonous, I could chew on it into the next century.”

Everybody was at a lost for words.

Hao Ren looked around carefully and found a very wide crack beneath Nidhogg’s skull. There was a faint red light under the crack, and he took out a probe and threw it down.

A moment later, Hao Ren got the picture from the probe. As he expected, it was not an ordinary fissure. There was a biological ventricle down there.

Judging from the biological tissue around the ventricle, it looked like the nucleus of the First Born’s brain.

And the decay began with the brain tissues.