The Record of Unusual Creatures

“When the great Yggdrasil woke up from its 2,000 years of slumber, its roots tore the earth open as it grew and spread out into the sky. Light pierced through the clouds into the world, bringing dawn to Midgard. As the sap of the World Tree flowed out into the world, lush vegetation grew, turning the barren land into a lush forest. – New Genesis: The Dawn.”

That was how the Midgard people would describe the dawn, years later. The literati would use the most magnificent words to describe what they saw, but Hao Ren’s record in his workbook was so much simpler.

“The tentacles of Blackie covered the whole land. As these tentacles waved around, the sky began to brighten up. It was dawn. These tentacles, which covered the land earlier, turned into the prairie and black forest at the border.”

The members of the Steam Assembly and leaders of the various communities in Twilight Capital stood on the steel platform. They were all stunned by what happened before their eyes. What happened outside the Twilight Shroud was utterly beyond their understanding. Apart from a small number of scholars who are the most traditional and unpopular, most people in this city had never imagined what it would be like as the long night ended. “The end of the night” was always a vague concept. It was nothing more than a dry vocabulary such as chaos, radiance, and recovery of all things. The ancestors lived under the energy shroud could never grasp the meaning of these words. What was radiance? What was recovery? What was the forest? What was grassland? No one knew.

Only when the people of Twilight Capital witnessed things personally, they quickly grasped what dawn was.

“The long night is over! The long night is over.”

Exclamations rose on the platform. Some high-ranking Steam Assembly members and scholars recovered from their stunned minds and muttered quietly among themselves. Cheers of excitement rose. Even the solemn Steam Assembly could not help themselves. Soon the atmosphere of excitement quickly spread into out from the steel.

All residents living in the upper city began to cheer.

But the loud noise of the “rebirth of the world” was drowning out the cheers of excitement. The transformation outside the Twilight Shroud was still going on. Lush vegetation sprouted with the nourishment of the lifeblood, even the sound of trees growing was a deafening roar. The earth transformed as Yggdrasil moved his tentacles. He was repairing the earth layers that had become fragile and unstable as a result of the mysterious explosion. Cavities were filled, and fissures healed. New rivers and plains were taking shape, and water from the aquifer was purified and discharged onto the surface, forming into waterways. Some of the tentacles were reaching into the sky to regulate the atmosphere to prepare for the first rain in the new world.

The First Borns were playing their roles. They maintained the ecological environment on the land. Though they were powerful and looked terrifying, their hideous tentacles were never born for killing.

The sights outside the city were so amazing that the inhabitants of Twilight Capital had not noticed one thing: the pale yellow energy shroud that had enveloped the city for thousands of years had disappeared. The light shining on their faces was of the long-awaited natural skylight.

In the outer zone of Twilight Capital, the steam locomotive supervisor Borcen was standing on his favorite locomotive. He felt a breeze blowing on his face for the first time in his life. There was no smoke, no pungent oily smell, only the scents from the indescribable plant and earth. Borcen sniffled with his red nose in the breeze. Looking up into the sky, he saw the clouds clearing up and the sky shining. The Twilight Shroud had gone.

“Oh, my ancestors!”

While transformation was ongoing in Midgard, Hao Ren saw some blurry black spots in the direction of Rainbow Bridge.

Those black spots flew in the air under the backdrop of the skylight and got closer and closer as if gods rode on the glory of the dawn onto the earth. When the black spots were close enough, he finally saw what those were: they were dragons flying in formation.

The golden dragon was leading in front followed by hundreds of dragons of various colors. There were so many of them that they almost covered the entire sky. As the first radiance of the new dawn shone, they rapidly approached Twilight Capital.

“Dragon! The dragons are coming!” Someone on the platform screamed. “The descendants of Nidhogg are coming!”

The scream came from some impulsive and timid guy. But it the people of Twilight Capital got the jitters of horror tales.

On the verge of chaos and just when Hao Ren as about to step forward to clarify things up, a shrill of a female came from not afar. “Calm down! Throw the hysteric out!”

It was Lavinia, the leader of the Steam Assembly, speaking. Everyone on the platform instantly became quiet.

“They are our people, the men of Galazur that I have mentioned earlier,” Hao Ren explained. He had told her about these dragons. But he did not expect Galazur would bring so many of them in a formation. Worse still, these dragons consisted of a variety of species and half of them were of black dragons!

Galazur was the head of all these five different colors of dragons.

The mighty dragon formation came from the horizon. Under the super-charging of mysterious draconian magic, their speed was much faster than it seemed. Almost instantaneously, this flying army had arrived above Twilight Capital. The golden dragon led a few dragons, which appeared like heads of their respective species, descending in a spiral. Hao Ren heard the loud voice of Galazur.

“Get out of my way! Those who are slower don’t try to go to the front! Clear some landing space for me! Those of you coming from behind, please find yourself some places and hang there if you can’t find any landing space. Those towers are solid enough to hold your weights; I have tried them before.”

Equipped with a translation plug-in, Hao Ren could understand what the dragon was saying. But the ordinary people had no clue what it meant. They only heard the golden dragon was roaring as she descended. Most faces pale, particularly a few high-ranking members of the Steam Assembly were already quaking in their boots.

The members of the assembly, face pale, watched as the dragons landed and lined up on the edge of the steel platform. Some of the dragons had to move aside to clear some space for those coming from behind. Those smaller dragons landed and hung on the towers around the platform as instructed by the golden dragon.

“You can proceed with the next phase,” Hao Ren said. His brows arched when he saw a small green dragon hanging from a tower began to gnaw the steel beam curiously. But he turned to the Steam Assembly members and said, “As what we have discussed, you all will evacuate the people, while the Twilight Guards will move out the resources. These dragons will help you to move the big boilers.”

After the members of the Steam Assembly left, Galazur, who had transformed into a human now, strode up to Hao Ren. Following behind her was a blue-eyed, blue-haired beautiful girl wearing a long blue dress with fine scales on her cheeks.

“She is the helper.” The dragon queen put on a broad smile and patted Hao Ren on his shoulder.

The blue-haired girl, appearing a little shy, smiled and bowed slightly at Hao Ren as a sign of respect. She did not say anything.

“Oh, she is Shirley, a kindergarten teacher in my homeworld. She’s come to help.”

Vivian, brows knit together, looked at the dragons lined up on the steel platform. “We thought you all come in human form! With many dragons flew in from the sky, the city is going to fall into panic.”

Galazur shrugged helplessly. “I can’t help it. They are all baby dragons, and few have mastered the skill of shapeshifting.”

Hao Ren was stunned. “Baby dragons? You brought a bevy of baby dragons?”

Galazur turned her head around and looked at the noisy baby dragons hanging from the towers. “By coming here and moving a few bricks, they would get an additional ten marks in their final exam. So they didn’t ask where and what. Where can I find such a readily available pool of good labors?”

Speechless.

It looked like the world of the dragons had such practices as well.