The Record of Unusual Creatures

Onlookers jumped out of their skins when a light column flashed across the sky out of the blue. It also caught Lily by surprise. Her howl choked in her throat and her mouth snapped shut as if she was afraid that something would come out of her mouth. Bright light residue slowly overflowed from the corner of her mouth and swelled on the hair of her cheek like flowing flame.

Lily looked up in Lockmarton’s direction and bared her teeth. Fire burst from her mouth.

Hao Ren was stunned. He wondered what had happened earlier and what the fire was all about.

Lily noticed Hao Ren reaction, but she could only shake her head in confusion and groan in her throat. She was just as clueless as Hao Ren.

The battle cries and explosions jolted Hao Ren out of his stupor. He knew that now was not the time to pick on the trivial details. Lily’s strange changes could wait, but if he did not quickly finish off Lockmarton, he would have a big problem.

The Spiral Hill had fallen into a frenzied war, and the entire battlefield was undergoing tremendous changes.

The battlefield could be divided into two layers.

On the ground below, the soldiers of Sanctum Expeditionary Forces were still fighting off Lockmarton’s minions. A torrent of humans covered in flesh and blood was trying to reclaim the earth infested by the power of nightmares. They knew the souls of their ancestors were fighting alongside them.

The emergence of Lockmarton’s true body seemed to have enhanced the strength of the monsters of Chaos. They formed out of nothingness more rapidly than before and guarded at all cost the Spiral Hill in the middle of the battlefield. Under the illumination of the light in the air, the war appeared particularly brutal.

Groups of white light were hopping on the battlefield; it was Y’zaks, Y’lisabet, and Nangong siblings. Irrespective of their strengths, they all carried some amount of divinity of Raven 12345, which was the most potent force against the evil. And it seemed that it was because of their presence that the defense of the Sanctum army could hold up.

Above the ground-level battlefield, there was a spiritual war going on.

Ten wardens were launching an attack on Lockmarton and its tentacles from the air. The three magic-powered warships, seemingly representing the mortal power in the realm of the deity, were the only human forces that could go head-to-head with Lockmarton. The primary weapons were cannons, missiles, lasers, and armed drones.

Hao Ren had chosen to fight on the ground level. He had to control the firing points that he had summoned while at the same time, he clenched his divine spear, Gungnir, as well as the Godslayer to deal with the strange things that popped up out of nowhere and the tentacles that Lockmarton dropped down. The former was an illusion in the nightmare. But when Lockmarton was around, the illusion would become real.

Hao Ren was using a combination of weapons that he rarely used. But it was especially handy at this moment.

Divine spear Gungnir, once a Norse divine artifact, was restored. After getting his hand on it and learning about its functions from Odin, Hao Ren had since mastered it. Other than its sharpness, the Gungnir could summon energy missile, which could keep track of its target, to deal with the elusive monsters.

As for the Godslayer, it was still as annoying as ever. But it was a divine weapon that could cut everything.

Its effectiveness was proven in the battlefield, where it could slice the tentacles of Lockmarton in half without a hitch.

With this in mind, it seemed the Godslayer’s annoying babbling became a little acceptable. Also as if the Godslayer realized that it was a crucial battle, it became less plaguey.

A tentacle hung down from the clouds, penetrating the layers of defense of the wardens and sweeping the human armies below away. While the mortal army was under pressure, two bright lights appeared among the mortal army, which was a magic strike by Calaxus and the Pope. It hit on the tentacle, which twitched and retracted back up into the sky.

Lockmarton roared angrily. It projected his horrible appearance into the human minds, in which it launched another round of attack. Many soldiers began to lose their minds and then disappeared out of thin air.

These soldiers had defeated many monsters in reality. They were strong physically, some even without a single bruise, but they were defeated in the spiritual battlefield and becoming the food of Lockmarton.

But in the real world, the prison wardens had cut down two more tentacles. A micro-nuclear bomb exploded in Lockmarton’s body, shattering the clouds and smoke, and turning the core of Lockmarton into a mess.

The chaotic battle happened on two fronts; one in the real world, and one in the spiritual realm.

Hao Ren began to feel as if he was split in two. As a demigod, he could see what Lockmarton saw, and sense what was happening beyond the realm of human perception. Hao Ren sometimes saw the indiscriminate bombing in the real world, the knights and prison wardens fighting Lockmarton. Sometimes he would jump into another battlefield, where there were clashes of shadows and light. In some other times, he would see many bizarre illusions as if they were all a dream.

He pulled his spirit away from the battlefield of the mind and looked up at the sky.

Lockmarton’s massive body still floated there. The repeated attacks did not seem to hurt it a bit. But Hao Ren could sense that the monster was erupting in anger.

Lockmarton was already angry.

The weak mortals were challenging the king of nightmares!

The wardens, once defeated, had come back.

A group of challengers, seemingly came out of nowhere, was acting in contempt of the Great Lord.

More importantly, the fact that such a group of weak, despicable insects was able to challenge it had enraged it.

Hao Ren could feel the wrath of Lockmarton and read from this anger what he wanted to know: fear.

Those weak mortals had held on to this point. Their toughness and strength had exceeded the expectations of Lockmarton.

As the mortal army continued to weaken and contain the legion of Chaos, the Spiral Hill was surrounded, and the connection between Lockmarton and the outside world was becoming weak. When these connections were lost, the attack from the prison wardens had become a threat.

The continuous and powerful bombardment further exacerbated the threat.

“Geddon!” Knowing the emotional changes of Lockmarton, Hao Ren quickly called the Lord of the Mountains via a telepathic connection. Before Hao Ren set off, he had left Geddon a mind converter to ensure instant communication in the battlefield. “Lockmarton is losing patience and confidence.”

The Lord of the Mountains immediately instructed his companions. As if they had given up hope of living, the prison wardens used their remaining strength and launched an all-out attack on Lockmarton.

As strong as Lockmarton was, it was nevertheless caught off guard by this attack. Hao Ren noticed that Lockmarton was retracting its tentacles, and the monsters of nightmares in the battlefield had reduced.

Hao Ren then established a mind connection and sent an instruction code to Lady Gloom, who was on standby in the real world.

Lockmarton had become defensive. It might be mad, but there was some basic instinct that remained in its mind. Facing the crisis, it felt confused and uneasy.

What went wrong?

How did these prison wardens suddenly regain their fighting spirit?

What are in the minds of those humans? Are they not afraid of death?

What do those insects want to do?

Hao Ren possessed an unknown ability. He could read the mind of those advanced life forms in the Plane of Dreams. He was now close to Lockmarton, the surroundings of which were essentially its thinking field. At this distance, Hao Ren had virtually entered the mind of Lockmarton.

There was a vast difference in the way of thinking between the two. Lockmarton was overly mentally infectious; Hao Ren had no way to read its mind directly. But with his abilities as a demigod, Hao Ren could still sense Lockmarton’s emotional changes.

Lockmarton’s emotional changes became especially apparent and intense as the battle raged on.

“It’s time.” Hao Ren gave Geddon the Lord of the Mountains a hint.

The ten prison wardens roared simultaneously in the air, and then another type of power rose from within them.

It was the power of the goddess. It felt unfamiliar, a bit different, but it was indeed the power of the true goddess judging from its form and nature. In Lockmarton’s mind, there was only one God: the goddess of creation.

Has the goddess of creation been resurrected? Is she back? Perhaps, she never fell in the first place? Or, have the wardens found her legacy? Is this legacy the goddess’ backup plan in case the containment fails? Lockmarton wondered.

The war seemed to have changed from ‘the mortal was in the throes of its deathbed struggle’ to a deliberate, planned, well-orchestrated hunting party!

When the most fearful thing happened since 10,000 years, even the Lord of the Nightmares himself had a nightmare.

The tentacles of Lockmarton retracted all at once, and the power of Chaos near Spiral Hill disappeared in the blink of an eye. Thick layers of defensive forces had formed in midair around the meat, from which a burst of energy came and shook the space around Spiral Hill.

A space crack suddenly appeared above the Spiral Hill. An unfamiliar space appeared on the other side of the space crack, where a field of light and weird structures were floating around.

Lockmarton passed through the space crack and disappeared in front of everyone.

For more than 10,000 years, the indestructible prison, which Lockmarton had tried to break out from but failed, left an opening, and the prisoner escaped.

As soon as the piece of meat disappeared from the spatial rift, Hao Ren captured Lockmarton’s last thought from his thinking field.

“What?”