The Record of Unusual Creatures

As a space-faring inspector with no fixed job-scope, Hao Ren felt that the number of his tasks was like the Brownian Motion; sometimes things would all happen at the same moment and made him wish that he could split himself in two to get an extra pair of helping hands. But at times, things were so peaceful that nothing happened at all, and he was extremely free to the point that mushrooms started to sprout…

The chase after the Crystal Core had run into a roadblock. To be fair, it was not a proper roadblock per se, it was because of the vastness of space, and the limited operation area of the droids, and there were no positive finds insofar. Hao Ren had already uploaded the messages Antony had recorded to the droid network server, and have also sent a copy to CARS, and had in advance programmed the countless aerial networks to keep a tight watch of things, and the satellites were scanning day and night for even the faintest of signals from the deep space.

As of now, however, there were no signals from the already explored areas of the Plane of Dreams.

At the same time, the probes set up to monitor the various ecosystems within the Plane of Dreams had no reports of any unusual occurrence.

Hao Ren was already planted on the table since morning listening to MDT’s report summary. Rollie was rolling lazily in her new bed beside the table, playing with her tail and she let out a lazy purr.

Even after being taught and nagged upon for a long while, the cat still had habits that stubbornly refuse to change. Aside from squatting to eat, and forgetting to walk on her two legs, her biggest quirk was that she needed to toss and turn around at many corners before settling down. Plus Lily had bought quite a few stuff online in the past two days and after opening up the parcels the leftover cardboard boxes were immediately claimed by the catgirl. Hao Ren obviously would not allow her to revert back to her old habits so Rollie had stuffed all her previously torn sheets into the cardboard box, turning it into giant bedding. And now, aside from food and bathroom she pretty much never leaves her lair…

Hao Ren was in fact very worried that someone ignorant of how his family works might think that he is an abusive bastard!

“Nyaaa!” The catgirl rolled about before using her leg to nudge Hao Ren by the tight. “Nyaa… Food.”

“Bloody hell, I’m really a manservant aren’t I…” Hao Ren sighed before grabbing the cat biscuits by the table and handing it over to her. “Don’t mess the place up, otherwise I need to clean the place up.”

Just as he was about to return to his reports, the cat girl kicked him again. “Nya… water.”

“Oh come on! The water is just by your box, too lazy to even stretch your hand to take it?!”

The cat girl protested. “I don’t want them in a cup. Pour it in meow bowl!”

Hao Ren felt like he was indeed a manservant!

After he was done attending to her royal meowness, Hao Ren was finally free to listen to the MDT’s reports.

“Actually there’s nothing too different, just like the earlier report.” the MDT floated and swirled above the table. “Zorm-Tannagost’s ecosystem reconstruction has been completed and the Zormnites are preparing for winter. They have already created a habitat and production facilities, and have enough material supplies. They should survive the first winter just fine. Holetta is pretty much paradise in the Plane of Dreams. The shock of the First Born had faded, and the satellite probes in orbit did not detect any remnants of ancient life on the planet. Io is normal as well, and the people of the ark has adapted to the ocean planet. Eva seems to be getting along well with her new guests. The security and safety of the above planets are fine, and combat drones are patrolling around every planet and have set up space fortifications with considerable firepower that can take out any threats. No obvious threats insofar.”

“How’s the Solenne Gateway doing?”

“A few of the dead Star Furnaces have been reactivated, and Lemendusa is supervising the manufacturing of the Creation Engine parts, and some parts have already been created. The construction unit that we left on the Solenne Gateway had created a massive assembly factory and is assembling the initial batch of parts.” as the MDT reported it deployed a holographic projection. From the display, Hao Ren could see a vast space and on it floated many oddly-shaped structures that glittered faintly, and around the assembly, many light strobes flew about working similarly to a guiding beam. “Aside from the production facilities, there is no other news from the Solenne Gateway. The dimension rift is still there, but there have not been any new ‘divine realms’ appearing from the Umbral Realm.”

“Hm….” Hao Ren massaged his nose as he tried to recall if he had missed anything. He suddenly recalled something he had ordered a long time ago. “Oh right, where are the exploration droids now? Are they still expanding towards the most primitive area at the center of the universe?”

“I was just about to get there.” the MDT’s surface blipped, indicating that this is an important topic. “The expansion speed of the droids is increasing as scheduled and as your orders have increased the number of weaponized droids. This is the area that they have expanded to so far, and the rough star map is already created…”

The MDT projected a series of complex light dots and lines, on it was the markings of the droids’ exploration area, and most of the systems that the droids have covered so far does not have any names, so they were assigned alphanumeric as they were indexed into the records.

“As many of the star systems in the path is unexplored and unrecorded, while the droids are expanding at an increasing rate, progress-wise it’s still rather slow as every inch of the suspect area needs to be investigated, and areas reach in minerals will need to be harvested for fortifications. This greatly slowed their expansion progress. But things will probably ramp up soon enough. The closer it gets to the primal zone within the center of the universe, the amount of celestial bodies that requires attention is reduced. The area before the droids is getting darker and sparser. Most of the star systems in the area had died off, and the atomic reaction had died off millions of years ago. So aside from some ice cold rocks, there’s nothing much worth investigating. An automated outpost should be able to monitor quite a large chunk of area.”

Hao Ren looked at the star map projected by the MDT, he saw the area after the bright, flickering star map. It was a cloud of darkness, and the darkness looked like it was hiding the most ancient secret within the Plane of Dreams. The expansion zone of the droids have not broken through the active star systems yet and was still some considerable distance away from the dark border. But regardless, that border had now appeared on the droids’ sensor array.

“The droid’s collective intelligence sent out another report earlier. It had mentioned that the vanguards sensors had detected an ‘unusual silence’ in the dark zone ahead.” The MDT continued. “Even the oldest of nebulae would still have the birth of stars, as the Plane of Dream’s planetary creation period is far from over, but the starlight within the dark zone was eighty percent lesser than expected. It seems like something had happened there, leaving every celestial body in the area a burnt out shell.”

“Darkness… darkness…” Hao Ren mumbled to himself. “It does seem to match our guesses. There must be something within that darkness. Let the droids continue… oh yeah, do the droids have any soul of their own?”

The MDT was stunned for a moment as it did not anticipate Hao Ren’s question. But it still responded seriously. “No, they only have intelligence, like me. Equipped with intelligence but no soul.”

Hao Ren was still scratching his head around the concept of ‘soul’ by the definition of the gods, and have no idea why the concept of ‘soulless intelligence’ would even appear. But he did not intend to dwell on it. “That’s fine. Better if they are without a soul. Let them continue their advance. Oh right, did they run into any surviving civilizations or any other in their expansion?”

“Regrettably, no.” The MDT’s voice did have a tinge of regret. “There were plenty of planetary ruins that were destroyed by the First Born, but many too had been consumed by the lifeblood and turned into something beyond description. Every material had been dissolved beyond recognition, and there aren’t any traces to start any investigations with. Conversely, the ruins of Tannagost and Io was like finding a candle in the dark. Also, those planets that were totally destroyed had some scant traces of life, but these are all crude lifeforms born from the lifeblood after the apocalypse. Their base form is very primitive, and their evolution extremely slow. Seems like after the death of the First Borns, the god-created ecosystems lost most of its powers, and the lifeblood too had mutated, I’m afraid that it is next to impossible to birth new and complex lifeforms now.”

“…Total destruction of all lifeforms, wiping out any traces the goddess had left in the universe. Mutating the properties of the lifeblood, and cutting off any chances of her people making a comeback.” Hao Ren muttered to himself again. “Seems like it is much easier to explain what’s happening now.”

As Hao Ren and MDT was having a further discussion of the issue with the Plane of Dreams, Lily’s shrill yelp came from the living room and cut their exchange short”

“Mr. Landlord, Mr. Landlord! Come here! Something’s wrong with Lil Pea!”