The Record of Unusual Creatures

The function of the Heart of God was simple. The ancient civilization had created it to be the universe’s final safety protocol: right before the power of annihilation destroyed every order in the world, the Heart of God would activate and restart the entire world.

However, to realize that simple function, they had to put in an inordinate amount of effort.

To reset the world, even when using rough unrefined technology, still required a high level of understanding and control of the laws of the universe. They needed to be able to interfere with base universal data, and most importantly, possess a terrifying computational ability.

Most of the Heart of God’s modules were dedicated computation units, and the rest of its modules were used to realize the interference of the base universal laws and the connection ports to the various other equipment.

“I have gotten the detailed parameters from the scepter, and while most of the parameter data is still quite beyond me, but its computational ability is pretty clear cut, and the Heart of God can fulfill the need of the Creation’s Engine.” As he noticed the debris of the shattered planet’s core swiftly cleared by the cleanup crew, Hao Ren turned to Rheia. “Of course, while the hardware may be up to par, it is still two different technologies, and we will need to tune the operating program and language translation, plus the initial design of the Heart of God did not provide it any auxiliary computational ability, and you will need to work on that.”

“An up to par hardware is good enough!” Rheia was surprised, “I already have the software needed, and now we even have the cipher, tweaking this won’t take long. But the size of this thing doesn’t match the core chamber of the Creation’s Engine, and I need to change the engine’s internal structure for a bit. Meh, not a big deal.”

Hao Ren nodded as he looked at the engineering droids flying around the Heart of God as they installed thrusters and a dimensional bubble generator before saying, “Speaking of which, Nolan, didn’t you say that the data from the Heart of God’s data vault said that the ancestral civilization had used the heart of their high leader to create it?”

Nolan did not understand the question. “Yes, what of it?”

Hao Ren rubbed his chin. “Hmmm… should I call him brave-hearted or something…”

“Your nonsense is on par with Doggie’s!” Vivian was stunned, “You can tell this civilization’s tech tree had already reached the conceptual level just by looking! God knows what they actually meant when they talked about pulling the heart out, and there was subsequent work as well!”

“Ah, that makes sense.” Hao Ren mumbled as he ruffled his hair. As he turned his gaze towards the Heart of God his expression turned serious, “Regardless, the unnamed kings that had sacrificed so much for the creation of this heart could now rest in peace…L’Haronne had survived in the end, and the apocalypse and the cycle of annihilation were ended as well. They had delayed the end of the world for so many times, and this time, it is delayed indefinitely for good….”

“No, the apocalypse will still come, partner. The universe does have an age limit, and nothing is eternal,” the MDT said. “But, at least this time around, they would not perish in of an out-of-no-where ‘annihilation’ or in a hopeless battle.”

“This broken universe will end someday, but that day is in the far distant future, perhaps even far beyond when the L’Haronnean civilization reestablishes its self and surpass its ancestors,” Rheia softly said, “and I have a plan…”

Hao Ren gave her a curious glance. “What plan?”

“The L’Haronneans are stuck on this planet, and there’s nothing but the void outside. While the divine barrier had protected them, but the day where this lonely planet would be their sole isolated island, and under that situation, restoring their civilization to the level of their ancestors is nothing but a dream,” Rheia said seriously. “The Umbral Realm is controlled by independent dimensional laws, so I cannot just drag it into the Plane of Dreams, so I plan to create a sea of stars here, just like the seas we saw when The Revelation departed. I have recorded them down, and while I don’t know which era was it, but the L’Haronneans had once bathed under that starlight… I want to return it to them.”

“Create a sea of stars for them huh, a great idea,” Hao Ren was touched by Rheia’s plan, but he had some questions, “But can you do it? For the proper creation deities of the Three Great Pantheons, this is probably easy, but you probably won’t be able to achieve that now… you are looking at millions upon billions of stars and planets, and a vast space to go along. Their scale will be way larger than the Umbral Realm itself.”

“I will study hard,” Rheia waved her fist before her chest, “Plus, the chaotic area of the Umbral Realm is not without anything, there are many information fragments floating around its edge. I can retrieve the materials needed to create the stars from there and I had also recently learned how to create a field of order in the void, and also about the world barrier. I can re-create the world barrier of the Umbral Realm, and allow it to expand…”

As she spoke, Rheia had a confident look on her face. “Perhaps I will need many years to pull this off, but I will master it. I want to complete this before the L’Haronneans gain the ability to traverse the stars, and when I help them to open the barrier on their planet, BOO! Surprise!”

“Then you’ll need to buck up,” Lily reminded her earnestly, “Don’t underestimate the ability of man to climb up the tech tree. They would already be sending orbital probes into space while you are still busy plastering pictures on other planets. That will be so embarrassing.”

And as usual, the werehusky’s train of thought was beyond everyone else.

Rheia still had not gotten used to the way the werehusky communicates, and she actually seriously pondered the matter. A clap later she said, “Then I’ll set up a vision screen first, and then try to bamboozle them calling it a gravitational or dimensional distortion, and take it off after I complete everything. By the time they have advanced to the point of understanding the truth of the universe and will no longer be affected by the gods, I will tell them everything there is all DLC…”

Hao Ren almost fell off the sky the moment he heard that. “Where the hell did DLC even came from? How did we get derailed from a serious topic to this?”

Vivian, without a word, pointed at the werehusky with an innocent look plastered on her face.

“Lily, reign in your imagination a little!” Hao Ren rolled his eyes at the werehusky. “Rheia is still schooling, don’t be a bad influence!”

He then turned to Rheia, “You don’t have to take her seriously most of the time. It’s already a miracle if she uses her head half of the time, and especially in this bloody hot place, her intell… Eh, Lily, why are you biting me?!!”

Rheia looked at Hao Ren and then at Lily who was biting hard on his arm. She felt that she really needed to study hard…

At that very moment, Nolan’s holographic projection appeared beside everyone, as she looked at Hao Ren who got bitten for his good-for-nothing mouth, before speaking with a flat tone, “Boss, a new discovery.”

Nolan’s voice sounded like an angel’s, and Hao Ren used the opportunity to slide his arm out of Lily’s fangs. “Alright, stop it. We have serious business now. What did you find?”

Nolan only said one word, “Vaccine.”

Not only Hao Ren who was checking the bite marks on his arm, or Lily who was licking her fang for a second bite, or Vivian and Rheia who were watching by the side, all of them were stunned as they heard the word.

A moment later, an engineering droid came before everyone and before the droid, a mechanical arm held a black, obsidian-like stone plate.

“What is that?” Hao Ren frowned. “Is that a Foundation Stone?”

“Yes, it is a Foundation Stone, or rather the ‘mother lode’ of all Foundation Stones.” Nolan said, “It was stored in a special chamber inside the Heart of God, and the security was exceedingly tight, and if not for the Scepter of Sovereignty giving us full control rights, I didn’t even know this chamber existed.”

“How is the Foundation Stone a ‘vaccine?” Hao Ren was rather confused, “Based on what information we have, the ancestral civilization never did come out with a vaccine no?”

“They did not. This ‘vaccine’ was created by itself after so many turn of the eras,” Nolan explained. “The Foundation Stone is just as its namesake, a foundation for the recreation of the universe. Due to their incomplete technology, the ancestral civilization could not freely manipulate the laws of the universe like the gods. They had to set up countless of ‘relays’ to realize the function of the Heart of God, the Foundation Stone are those ‘relays’. In every turn, the Heart of God needs ti first collate a vast amount of data from the entire universe, before copying and restarting, and after restarting it will need set up new data collection and insertion points, so the Foundation Stones are not only the cipher for the Heart of God, it is also their…”

“Sensors and output terminal?” Hao Ren completed her sentence for her. “I get it, so this piece here…”

“All Foundation Stones are cloned from it, and after the word is annihilated, the data of all of the destroyed Foundation Stones will be transferred into this ‘mother lode’. This process is quite akin to a material projection but much cruder.” Nolan appraised the technology of the ancestral civilization and revealed how the Foundation Stones had become a ‘vaccine’. “The Heart of Gods origination protocol will totally reset the taint of madness in this universe, and the Foundation Stone will also be reset, but after this process had gone on and on, and in one of this process, something happened, and it was unknown which era this flaw had appeared, and one of the Foundation Stones had completed the upload while being tainted.

Hao Ren raised an eyebrow immediately, “That serious?! And the Heart of God was not infected?”

“No, if the Mad Lord’s main body was in this universe, then the taint would have spread, but this universe only has the Mad Lord’s remaining power, and that is not too difficult to remedy.” Nolan shook her head. “The Heart of God probably detected the system anomaly during one of its diagnostics, and in the log, I’ve found a period of time where it had been resetting a few key processes in increasing frequency. This is probably one of the reasons why the memories of the heritor souls were damaged. But regardless, its emergency process created an unexpected effect, and the taint inside the Foundation Stone… was converted, and this Foundation Stone is now the vaccine that we are looking for.”