The Record of Unusual Creatures

Light flowed across the black metal box when Hathaway activated the runes, which acted as the switch. Hesperides’ blood was the energy. With the presence of these two things, the faint light began to flow along the ridge lines on the box, leaving behind distinctive trails. These straight trails divided the box into a dozen blocks. When this happened, Hao Ren only started to realize how he had to open the object.

But he did not have to do it himself. As the seal was released, the whir inside the box became more distinctive. A moment later, the box came apart at the glowing seams with a few soft clicks. When these parts reclustered, they became four separate pale-yellow scrolls.

These were all about it.

It stupefied Hao Ren that the celestial object, which he had spent so much time and effort looking for it, was only four scrolls. He had expected more. But he knew that these things contained some significant information. In the eyes of Zeus, they might even be as important as the wand; otherwise, he would not have asked Hercules to risk everything to bring them out of Mount Olympus.

Hesperides looked at the scrolls and said softly, “So these were the things Hercules carried all the way while evading the pursuit of the demon hunters? How important are they?”

Hao Ren took a roll from the container. After the MDT verified that it was safe, he then slowly unrolled the scroll.

Strange symbols, not only Letta runes but also ancient Greek characters and lost letters filled the roll. The baffling thing was that the grammar of each sentence was unusual. The author wrote in some encrypted text. But Hao Ren felt that ciphering was a little unnecessary.

Since there was a seal that worked perfectly fine to secure the container and only the descendants of the Olympus family could open it, what was the purpose of enciphering the text on the scrolls? If the seal were not able to stop the container from hacking in the first place, the text encryption would only delay but not prevent the decoding. The level of cryptography used was not challenging to Hao Ren. The otherworldings and demon hunters, or any long-living supernatural races for that matter, could take their sweet time to decipher the scrolls and figured out what the text meant.

Hao Ren did not even need time to crack them. The MDT, a super-high-speed information processor, could help him decipher and read the text on the scrolls in real time.

“When He first came to this world, the universe was in chaos, and the power of disorder pervaded the stars and planets and the space around them. An evil existence ruled the world. It was called the King of the Ancients, and the Mad Lord. This ancient tyrant feasted on the universe, greedily devouring the primordial energy and placing everything under its brutal rules. The Mad Lord was a mess and illogical existence. As its name implies, madness was the only thing around this tyrant…”

Hao Ren’s fingers moved on the roll. While his brain ciphered, he read it out softly.

The light around him distorted gradually. The forest in the surroundings fell into darkness, bit by bit. The sky seemed to be out of balance, slanting toward the west as the sun on the horizon became an oval ball of fire, tearing the air into many horrible strings. In the darkness in between these strings, dark energy was slipping out as if the end was coming.

Lily was the first to notice the phenomenon. The hyperactive husky, unable to keep her attention on one thing for long, screamed, “Mr. Landlord, look at the sky!”

Hao Ren was interrupted, and the distortions around him disappeared in the blink of an eye. But he managed to get a glimpse of what happened.

The sight sent a chill up his spine. Hao Ren quickly turned to the MDT. “What happened just now?” he asked.

The MDT had captured the last scene too. It said, “It seemed that it happened when you were reading the scrolls. There were signs of chaos in the nearby dimension. But the chaos was only confined in a small area. I have cross-checked with the data from the satellites, which happened to flyby in orbit above. There were no significant atmospheric anomalies detected.”

Hao Ren suddenly felt evil energy in the scroll in his hand. He quickly tossed it back into the container. A few words came into mind: The King of the Ancients, the Mad Lord, the frenzied and brutal law of the universe, and the word ‘He’ at the beginning of the text. These things were not related to the worship ceremony of Vivian of the Olympian gods. The script was more like a description of something of a higher order.

Hao Ren could not help but make some associations in his mind. But he did not go further into the details.

Because he felt that things—the celestial object and the scroll— had deviated dramatically from what he was expecting. The forest was not the right place to begin his study. He wanted to move things back to the safety of his lab before he began to dissect these dangerous things. Or maybe he might as well do it in Raven 12345’s mansion, he thought.

The goddess had been blowing her own house apart anyway.

He tossed everything in his dimensional pocket, which already contained the wand. Dusting the dirt off his body, he got to his feet. “We will only handle these things when we get back.”

Lily, who had spaced out, came back in. Shaking her leg, she asked, “Then what’s next? Are you going to have lunch?”

Hao Ren choked. He began to marvel at the way of thinking of the dog maiden.

“Let’s get out of here,” Vivian sighed. “But before going home, we have to bring Hathaway to Coldpath and let White Flame know about our findings.”

Hao Ren nodded. “We have solved the mystery of the fate of the 12 demon hunters, who have disappeared for the last 300 years, and found the Olympus legacy. We have essentially solved the mysteries on behalf of the demon hunters.”

Lily nodded in total agreement, her eyes brightening up. “Woof! Woof! Yeah, yeah! So are the demon hunter going to treat us dinner?”

Everyone was rendered speechless.

After bidding farewell to Pierre and his three friends on the edge of the forest, Hesperides returned to Athens. Besides Vivian and Lily, the ghost Hathaway was following Hao Ren to Coldpath. The MDT initiated the teleporting sequence and sent them straight to the Coldfrost Citadel in the Arctic.

Hao Ren and his buddies had become frequent visitors and VIPs in the eyes of the demon hunters. They could go in and out of Coldpath and the Coldfrost Citadel freely without having to ask for permission. A few demon hunter acquaintances greeted them on their way in. They walked in the cold street of the Coldfrost Citadel, heading toward the Hoarfrost Sanctum where White Flame and Hasse lived.

While on their way, Hathaway, following behind Hao Ren. As a ghost, she could be in any form, but she was unsure where she should be wearing the demon-hunter suit. So he decided to keep her image of a noble lady, just like when she was alive.

No ghosts, or any spirits, could evade the detection of the demon hunters. The most elite and experienced demon hunters here could instantly smell the scent of the spirits through hundreds of layers of camouflage. For this reason, Hathaway had attracted a lot of attention. Some more sophisticated demon hunters, having identified Hathaway as their race apart from that she was a ghost, could not help but stare at her curiously.

But upon seeing Hao Ren and his team in the front, these demon hunters looked away and quietly watched as the ghost entered into the Hoarfrost Sanctum.

Hathaway’s eyes darted around the familiar place. It was a long way home after three centuries. But now she was dead in a ghost body. Thinking about what she had been through, she could not help but sigh. She had no word to describe her feelings.

It was uncharacteristic of her never-ending babbling character of the past.

White Flame, long before Hao Ren arrived, had gotten the news of his coming. She was not going to be caught in her scruffy homebody appearance again. This time, she was waiting in the hall in the sanctum with Hasse.

They met, and after a while of pleasantry, Hao Ren shoved Hathaway, who was =hasitant, forward. He was determined to set straight the identity issue of this ghost before going down to business. Otherwise, this, judging from her shy demeanor, she could flee from the scene at any time.

“This is Hathaway. One of the 12 hunters who disappeared 300 years ago. She is the only one alive… Err, I mean, not really alive.”

White Flame and Hasse looked dumbfounded.